WHAT THE IRS SHOULD DO

In reaction/response to the COVID-19 pandemic the Internal Revenue totally closed down all operations and offices for many months in 2020.  During this period, the IRS did not process tax returns – current and amended – and did not process taxpayer and tax professional correspondence.  I do not know the extent to which payments made during this period were acknowledged and processed.
 
The “correctness” of the extent and duration of the IRS closure is open to interpretation.  But it happened and we must now deal with the consequences. 
 
When the IRS finally opened up again its system continued to spew out automatic intimidating balance due notices based on the information in the system prior to the closure.  However, much of the backlog of unopened and unprocessed correspondence were responses by taxpayers and tax professionals to erroneous balance due assessments, explaining the IRS error or correcting a taxpayer error.
 
Taxpayers in general are truly intimidated by continual, however erroneous, IRS notices.  And they will pay the requested balance due although they know the amount requested being wrong.  Many taxpayers paid the IRS what it asked for, despite having previously written, or had their tax professional write, to the IRS to explain errors in the assessment.
 
The IRS has acknowledged the backlog of returns and correspondence.  But it continues to automatically issue balance due notices, regardless of the fact that it is aware that the taxpayer may have previously responded to the notice providing information and documentation.  These continued notices assume the taxpayer had totally ignored all previous notices, which is often not true.
 
Responses to the continued erroneous mailings create more correspondence and increase the already humongous backlog.  And taxpayer erroneous overpayment of incorrect assessments must be addressed by taxpayers and tax pros, creating more correspondence to add to the pile.  This only compounds the problem.
 
What the IRS should have done, and should do now, is put a temporary hold on all open balance due accounts and cease from sending out automatic notices and other collection activities for these accounts until the backlog of correspondence is processed.  As correspondence regarding a taxpayer notice is acknowledged in the IRS system the hold must be continued until the issue is resolved.
 
Tax professional membership organizations should join together to urge the IRS to do this now.
 
TTFN