(FiveNation.com)- As if the IRS isn’t another example of what occurs when bureaucracy gets way too big, a confusing tax season and issue is leading some taxpayers to receive what is called a “CP-14.”
The IRS has been pretty backed up this 2021 tax season, but they claim that their unprocessed paper-filed returns are going down, according to Forbes. There is reportedly an outstanding number of mail that remains unprocessed which, in turn, is creating more mail for both the IRS and taxpayers. Perhaps this load is causing confusion because taxpayers are receiving CP-14 notices.
These notices are issued when a taxpayer allegedly has a balance due to the IRS. “In early June tax professionals on social media started reporting problems with electronic payments made by the taxpayer listed as the spouse on jointly filed returns,” Forbes writes, adding that this made no sense because taxpayers were paying their balances.
What is even stranger is that when tax professionals began calling the IRS, representatives of the bloated government agency said that there was “no way of knowing” whether payments they received were from jointly filed returns or some other tax debt. But this is blatantly incorrect because Direct Pay taxpayers must specify a reason for sending the agency money, reasons such as balance due, estimated payment, etc. They must also specify the tax form and the tax year that the payment applies to.
Despite this pervasive issue, that even reached Twitter with the hastag “#TaxTwitter, the IRS is not calling this a systematic issue. They have appointed a subject matter expert to handle the IRS System Advocacy Management System (SAMS).
Until the issue is identified as systemic, taxpayers and tax professionals reportedly have one or two options: call or write to the IRS to get their tax payments sorted and ensured that they are properly applied.
Another tax advisor is saying that the IRS is claiming that they never received her clients’ payments, despite those payments being made with automatic debit. The advisor is saying that there are other documents she and her firm receive from the IRS that simply make no sense and they cannot figure out what adjustments were made to returns or why.
What could the IRS do as they continuously drop the ball? Stop dropping the ball. Until they figure out what is occurring, they should “discontinue issuing automated compliances” and “make the investigation CP-14 issues through SAMS a high priority,” Forbes wrote.
