As of March 18, the IRS has a backlog of 15 million paper tax returns for the 2022 tax season. All of which, must be processed by workers typing out each digit and each letter!
Of course there are times when we have to correspond with them, but we are encouraging taxpayers to file and pay electronically. The Service has a lot of new employees who receive minimal initial training prior to their job assignments. The likelihood of a typographical error at the IRS is higher than it was in the 1980s or 1990s.
If you mail the IRS a check with a payment voucher, a clerk must post that payment to your account. If one digit in your Social Security Number is mistyped, it will cause a serious “Train Wreck” that will take months to resolve.
Greg
First, the IRS Computer will send a Notice
You have an outstanding balance of unpaid taxes! You will call us to say, “but I sent them the payment and they cashed my check.” We will say, “we need a copy of the backside of your cancelled check.”
But my Bank doesn’t provide a copy of the Backside of my Checks
That’s when we will advise that you must go to your bank and get a copy of the back of the check, so that we can mail it to the IRS. That’s what it will take for the IRS to see where they misapplied the funds.
After we Mail the Backside of the Cancelled Check with a Letter…
Our correspondence lands in the back of a tractor trailer of Unopened Mail in the IRS parking lot to await processing. When it is finally opened and processed, perhaps 6 to 8 months later, a clerk makes the correction to your account.
And life returns to normal.