Taxpayers should expect serious delays from the IRS this year – a tax scholar offers tips but says only Congress can fix the underlying problem

  No one likes tax season. It’s complicated, it’s stressful, and it’s getting worse.

  Last year was already the “most challenging year taxpayers and tax professionals have ever experienced,” according to the Taxpayer Advocate Service, an independent part of the Internal Revenue Service. According to the agency’s annual report, taxpayers had trouble reaching the IRS, tax returns took months to process, almost a quarter of refunds didn’t go out until 2022, and collection notices were sent out even after the tax owed was paid.

When Americans get their tax refunds, they go to the dentist

  Megan, who currently lives in Pittsburgh, was hospitalized in September for pneumonia. It was just a one-day stay, and she had health insurance, but even so, the bills piled up, eventually totaling $6,500.

  The only thing that made paying them realistic, she said, was that she received a $4,200 tax refund this year.

  “I would have put off my medical payments [without the refund],” she told me via email. “Between rent and day to day expenses, I don’t have the income to pay both. … Even with insurance, the numbers seemed insurmountable until I got my refund. If it wasn’t for that I would have had to reapply for payment plans with the risk of being sent to collections.”

For low-income Americans, the IRS is always shut down

  The ongoing partial government shutdown has dragged on for more than 27 days, and it doesn’t look like the Trump administration is interested in ending it any time soon. One of the agencies affected is the IRS, and the longer the shutdown continues, the likelier it is that tax season becomes ensnared in a significant way. The Trump administration was spooked enough by the prospect of people not receiving their 2018 tax refunds that it ordered furloughed IRS employees back to work despite the fact that it may be illegal.