Today, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard E. Neal (D-MA) and Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ) questioned why the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) once again sent erroneous notices to taxpayers, causing unnecessary and confusing stress to nearly 260,000 Americans. In a letter to IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig, the Chairs called on the agency to stop sending notices while nearly 7 million 2019 returns remain unprocessed due to IRS backlogs.

“The IRS continues to have a staggering backlog of unprocessed 2019 tax returns that, most recently, was reported to include nearly 7 million unprocessed individual tax returns,” the Chairs explained. “In light of these severe processing delays, it is very likely that many taxpayers receiving CP59 notices already filed the returns that the IRS claims are outstanding. For taxpayers who have dutifully complied with their filing obligations, these notices impose unnecessary stress and sow confusion.  For IRS employees, these notices create unnecessary work while they struggle to meet the current demand.”  

“As noted above, this is not the first time that the IRS has sent taxpayers incorrect notices in the last year,” Neal and Pascrell reminded Commissioner Rettig, and went on to detail the repeated efforts by the Committee, begging IRS to stop sending incorrect notices to the American people. 

The Chairs concluded by emphasizing: “Enough is enough. Taxpayers deserve better, and the IRS needs to do better. These repeated errors constitute a massive failure of leadership at the highest level…[T]he IRS should carefully review any notices before sending to ensure that they are correct and timely and that taxpayers are in no way being penalized for delays that resulted through no fault of their own.  The Committee will be carefully monitoring the agency’s next steps in this regard.”

The full letter is available HERE.