ACS LETTERS

[Lee B]

 

"The IRS began sending out letters from the Automated Collection System function in June, and restarted the income tax levy program in July. In addition, responsible officers continue to work on nonfiler cases and are sending out notices and billing notices; however, their focus is primarily on egregious cases, such as high-income non-filers, according to Mankowski.

“Unfortunately, there’s still a backlog of paper, and until that’s cleared there will be people that efiled and mailed in their check, the check cleared, but they get notices saying they never paid,” he said. “That’s the downside of restarting the program. They have to do it because otherwise people will get complacent when they think there’ll be no repercussion for not paying.”

“The phone lines are still backlogged due to taxpayers not getting their refunds,” he explained. “They have to go through manual processing, mostly for returns that had additional stimulus funds. Because of time constraints, the IRS didn’t have time to fully reconfigure their computers to recalculate the additional credits due for the additional stimulus money.

 

I tell my clients that if they don’t owe and have proof of payment, hold off on responding to the notices.”

 

[Catherine]

I had a client get about their THIRD letter demanding payment of tax NOT owed - they filed about a week before the UI exclusion.  They've actually paid the small amount of tax that was really due, but keep getting auto-letters demanding a lot more, that is NOT owed, and every time they get a new letter they call me in a panic.  And I tell them, *again*, that the letters are being sent out by computer and that they don't owe $2K.

I am SO sick of this.  And there is nothing anyone can do.

[Tax Prep by Deb]

My client went ahead and paid what was owed, then about two weeks latter she received a check for exactly what we were expecting as well as for what she had paid.  I was able to reconcile it to the penny!