Now That It's Over ...

Now that tax season is over and we are starting to recover here, it can be worthwhile to look back on the time that was.

​The first thing to note is that this season largely represented a “return to normal” as there were no (any new ones, anyway) pandemic measures to find our way through that added to the regular questions concerning everyone’s tax returns and provided some surprise answers for some. It may take some time now for people to adjust to their new normal (for the lack of these pandemic measures offered different surprises for some) but there is a sense that answers feel clearer now anyway.

Not only did those pandemic measures affect everyone individually, they affected the IRS as a whole, as the agency was given the responsibility of getting out three rounds of stimulus payments while adjusting to the rest of the other new rules and changes instituted. In addition, this season was the agency’s first chance to really show off improved performance following recently receiving a 10-year, $80-billion increased funding package.

It is important to remember that much of that new funding is going toward enforcement, so it is not as if things should feel different to every individual taxpayer. In fact, one could plausibly argue that with the IRS receiving that money, people should instead just not have to think about the IRS and its work should happen smoothly without note.

Over this recent tax season, the IRS achieved an 87% level of service (and exactly how that is measured, well, we will leave that to the IRS super fans). Now, this doesn’t sound that spectacular to me, but it did at least surpass the 85% goal set by Treasure Secretary Janet Yellen. But even if those don’t sound like the loftiest of numbers, it does look MUCH better when compared against last year’s number of a 15% level of service to taxpayers – so yes, things really were that bad.

I think this comes with two big headlines. First, after a couple of years of backlogs when we had to tell some clients that we couldn’t give them any type of reasonable prediction as to when some filings would be processed, that has been worked through. Mailed forms will still take longer to process, but we aren’t talking a seemingly endless number of months anymore. And the average phone wait time for the agency has recently decreased from 27 minutes to four minutes – and beyond that, just the fact that you can get through to them on the phone to start (for those are only wait times for those whose call is answered) is a welcome change too.

So even if the IRS is an entity that is hard to ever feel THAT positive about (it seems like it just takes our money after all), let’s give credit where credit is due … and it is at this time.

Warmly,

Josh Bousquet
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