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Americans routinely postpone their tax returns. This year, the tax season is expected to be further delayed – thanks to the closure of the government .
The Internal Revenue Service is one of many federal agencies that have closed since December 22. Only 12% of its staff work, without pay, mainly on safety and technology. The agency does not issue refunds, update tax forms, or respond to telephone support lines in accordance with its closure plans.
This makes swimmers sweat while they prepare for an abbreviated filing window. This closure complicates an already complex tax season due to the myriad of new regulations created by the law on tax reduction and reduction, the radical bill signed by President Donald Trump towards the end of 2017.
"When I look in my tax software, is a professional tax software, many forms have not yet been finalized," said Steven Zelin, a CPA based in Manhattan. "We can not table and as the tax legislation has changed so much, it is likely that there will be a delay" to start the filing season, he added.
Anyone who hopes that an arrest from the IRS means a respite on his taxes will be disappointed. The agency's website states that taxpayers "should deposit and pay their taxes normally".
The problem is that the weeks preceding the taxation period are anything but "normal" are the 39; IRS, which is at the end of its annual year-end closing and which, this year, follows the biggest overhaul of the tax code since the 1980s.
The IRS closes typically it's going from November to the end of the year to update its systems with This includes changes to many tax forms, which form the basis for calculations made by tax software, both software professionals and the programs used. d by consumers.
In the last two years, the IRS has announced January 4 or 5 the date on which individuals can begin filing electronically, usually in the second or third week of January. Friday, we do not know when the season begins. The IRS was not immediately available for comment.
"Generally, in the first two weeks [of the year] we would hear something," said Lisa Greene-Lewis, a CPA with TurboTax. Greene-Lewis and the other tax preparers surveyed under this article stated that they had not heard from the IRS before closing indicating how to proceed if the agency was closed.
Greene-Lewis said that TurboTax's filing systems are ready to operate even with the IRS business at a standstill. Taxpayers can still file via the online tax tool, but the company will simply keep their information until the government reopens, before forwarding them.
The IRS will not issue a refund when the market closes
. continues in the tax season, the IRS could call back additional staff, according to a union official. The agency will still not issue a refund, however. This is considered a non-essential activity (or "not-excepted" in IRS jargon), according to the agency's closure plan.
Americans facing tax issues related to the IRS, such as audits, or those who are asking questions about tax returns face much greater difficulties. These are usually people who declare taxes on their own.
Angela Reed, a partner at Tarbell & Co., an Iowa-based CPA firm, is trying to help a client who has filed late nonprofit tax returns. But with the IRS without staff, she is in a stalemate.
"I can not do anything with that right now, I can not call the IRS and have a discussion," she said.
Reed, whose firm prepares about 4,000 tax returns each year, said that she had not not yet felt the severe consequences of this closure, but that she feared delays in processing tax refunds if the closure continues much longer.
In other words, taxpayers who rely on a tax refund to pay their credit card bills from their Christmas expenses may feel stuck. About $ 102 million of tax refunds were issued last year, for a total amount of $ 285 billion, according to eFile, a tax calculation software website.
Even before the closure, some IRS staff members feared they would not be ready in time for the tax season, given the magnitude of the changes made to the 2017 law. ;tax.
"We have just received the biggest tax reform since 1986, and the IRS has to do a lot of work to prepare for it," said Tony Reardon, president of the National Union of Treasury Employees, which represents the workers of the IRS and elsewhere.
"What I heard from our members was that the training they received was sometimes outdated, incomplete – and that was before the stop," said Reardon . "It is very possible that the filing period of income tax returns will be delayed."
"I was getting ready for that," said Jonathan Medows, CPA in Manhattan. "I noticed years ago that the IRS was making these changes, [tax software companies] was struggling to implement them … and it's a good year, so you do not know what it's like." Only have a few tax changes. "
There is no precedent for the closing of the IRS as tax season approaches, said Mark Mazur, former Treasury Tax Policy Officer and current director. Tax Policy Center. The closest is the 27-day closure of 1995, which stems from a conflict between Democratic President Bill Clinton and the Republican-controlled Congress. This closure ended on January 6, 1996.
"We are currently in unprecedented territory here," he said.
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