The Office of the Taxpayer Advocate expressed
that the IRS is in crisis.
In its most recent report, I'm going to explain what
you need to know for filing your taxes in 2022
some mistakes that the IRS made which could delay your
refund, what to do to improve your chances of receiving
your tax refund quickly, and how you can actually get
through to the IRS on the phone.
At the end of 2020 calendar year, the
IRS estimated that it had more than 11.7
million paper filed individual and business tax returns
that it still needed to manually process.
As of this winter, the IRS still
had 6.2 million unprocessed individual tax returns.
So why are so many waiting on their tax refunds?
What should you expect and be aware of in
2022 as you file your 2021 income taxes?
And what can you do to speed things up and get help?
First, the IRS issued two very important announcements
that taxpayers must know as they can result
in your return being rejected or delayed.
When you file your income taxes, you are required
to enter in your prior year's AGI as a
form of validation, but many individuals have not yet
had their 2020 tax return processed.
If this is the case, then the IRS States that if
your 2020 tax return has not yet been processed, you must
enter $0 for your prior year's adjusted gross income.
The IRS also States that if you use the nonfilers
tool in 2021 to register for an Advanced Child Tax
Credit payment, or third Economic impact payment in 2021, you
must enter one dollars as your prior year AGI.
The second extremely important announcement that the
IRS issued was that many child tax
credit letters were sent with incorrect amounts.
These letters are utilized for inputting how
much you received in terms of the
child tax credit into your tax return.
And since the IRS mailed out many with incorrect
amounts, this can result in a delay to refunds.
If you enter this incorrect amount, the IRS
advises that taxpayers double check their letters and
cross reference those letter amounts with their online
Child tax credit account on IRS.
Gov before filing.
The next calls for delay applies to those who
are claiming the Earned Income Tax Credit or the
Child Tax Credit, which means that you may not
receive your refund until on or after March 1.
This is due to a 2015 antifraud law called
the Path Act protecting Americans from tax hikes.
The agency is not allowed to begin
issuing refunds to people who claimed either
of these credits until February 15.
While this state has now passed, this simply means that
now the IRS can begin to process these refunds, which
is a process which will continue for quite some time.
The next cost for delays are for
returns that are flagged for manual review.
If the IRS must have a representative look over your
return manually due to a flag, this can cause several
months in delays, typically between 90 and 120 days.
According to the IRS, common causes for a return being
flagged for manual review include discrepancies in your earnings if
your W2, 1099 or other documents don't match what
you input in your return, your tax return is flagged
for a manual review by an employee.
Additionally, if an error was made in reporting an
incorrect amount for stimulus payments, then this can result
in your filing being flagged for manual review, which
can take up to 120 days.
The next major cause for processing and refund delays
includes ongoing problems with low staffing in the IRS.
Cbs reports that the agency's workforce is the
same size that it was back in 1970,
despite the population growing by 60%.
In addition to a slow processing of
returns, the Taxpayer Advocates annual reports stated
that in filing year 2021, the IRS
received about 282,000,000 telephone calls.
Customer service representatives, however, only answered about
32 million, or 11% of these calls.
This meant that most callers could not
obtain an answer to their tax questions
or get help with their problems.
For those of you who do need to contact the IRS
quickly, there is a faster way to get a guaranteed callback
from the IRS without having to redial which is to use
Claimer, a third party company which will forfee redial the IRS
and then send you the connected line.
Once it is successful, they provide up to
ten free callbacks should something go wrong with
your call and you need to reconnect.
If you want to connect with the IRS quickly,
you can use the link in the video description
which will save you $5 on your first call.
So is there anything that you can do
in order to speed up your refund?
The IRS States that they urge taxpayers to file
electronically with direct deposit information as soon as they
have everything they need to file an accurate return.
This means that you will need to cross reference
your child tax credit amount to ensure that your
letter sent by the IRS is in fact correct.
Next, you will need to ensure that all
stimulus payments are entered correctly and line up
with your IRS letter for these.
Next, ensure that all W2's, 1099s and other
tax forms have been received and are entered accurately.
Taxpayers can check their refund status using
the Where's My Refund tool at IRS.
Govrefunds.
Lastly, you can contact the Office of
the Taxpayer Advocate if you need assistance.
Okay guys, I hope that was
helpful in the video description.
You will be able to find the links for
all resources that I have referenced in this video.
Please remember to click like subscribe and leave
me comment down below letting me know the
status of your 2021 tax return.