The U.S. Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) has responded to an urgent inquiry from Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ-09), seeking information on erroneous notices sent out by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). On December 22, Pascrell wrote to TIGTA J. Russell George seeking a review of potentially 11 million erroneous notices being printed or sent by the IRS, and last week received a detailed reply.

“I am gratified that the Treasury Department’s Inspector General for Tax Administration is moving expeditiously to identify the mistakes made by the IRS in sending out faulty notices to Americans,” said Rep. Pascrell, one of Congress’s leading proponents of IRS oversight. “These findings show a deluge of potentially false notices. I am calling on the IRS to halt the imposition of any unfair penalties on taxpayers until the agency can account for and resolve these erroneous notices. In the meantime, our committee will continue to shine a bright light on IRS’s systemic problems and push for broad reform to rebuild public confidence in our tax administration structure.”

Rep. Pascrell has been active in pursuing IRS oversight. Also in December Pascrell wrote the IRS Commissioner and TIGTA seeking immediate answers on whether the recent government cyberattack compromised any Americans’ taxpayer information. Last year, Pascrell convened an Oversight Subcommittee hearing on IRS failures and tax inequality, highlighting the IRS’s systematic refusal to audit rich tax scofflaws and blasted the IRS’s illegal withholding of Donald Trump’s tax returns.

A copy of the TIGTA’s response to Rep. Pascrell’s request is available here.