In the movie Apollo 13, NASA flight director Gene Kranz, staggered by the sudden cascade of malfunctions that imperiled the United States’ third manned moon landing, asks his Houston team, “What do we got on the spacecraft that’s good?”
After the IRS issued its March 27 “evacuation order” sending thousands of its employees across the nation home for enforced telework — ordering them to take office equipment home to do it — and following last week’s e-services help desk shutdowns, collection and exam suspensions, and three-month tax return and payment postponements, one might be tempted to ask, “What do we got on the IRS that’s good?”
“They’re taking e-filings, and if you need a refund, all of that stuff is working,” said Jeffery S. Trinca of the National Association of Enrolled Agents. “Everything else is now slowed down or closed down.”
The latest filing season statistics show little impact so far on IRS return and refund processing systems from the coronavirus pandemic. But they cover the period before the IRS’s Kansas City, Missouri, processing center was shuttered March 26 and before practically every other IRS facility was closed down less than a week later. The IRS evacuation order, obtained by Tax Analysts, states that all workers who can telework should prepare to, while others should contact their supervisors for instructions. Some IRS workers will still be required to report to their offices, but it's unclear whom.
The IRS received 84.2 million individual returns through March 20, just a little more than the 84 million received through March 19, 2019. IRS return processing was off just a half percent, dropping to 81.16 million returns processed through March 20 from 81.56 million through March 19 last year. E-filing and refund issuance are also on track so far to match last year, although the impact of the tax day delay from April 15 to July 15 is unknown.
Automation is the key to the success of the e-filing functions at the IRS, Trinca said. About 90 percent of individual tax returns are filed electronically; by lowering the labor component of the IRS’s e-filing and refund issuance systems, automation allows social distancing to reduce contagion, he said.
In another effort to protect employees, the IRS issued a memo March 27 to its service and enforcement personnel outlining temporary measures allowing the acceptance of electronic signatures and the secure transmission of a variety of documents between IRS employees and taxpayers and practitioners.
‘New and Unsettling’
The IRS didn’t respond to a request for information on how many workers were affected by the March 27 work-at-home directive, or what functions continue in those workers’ absences.
National Treasury Employees Union President Tony Reardon said in a March 30 statement that the IRS is within its legal right to issue the order mandating telework. “We understand it will be disruptive for some, but we stand ready to help front-line employees adjust and to make sure they are treated fairly in the process,” he said.
“The coronavirus pandemic has altered our lives at work and home in new and often unsettling ways,” Reardon added.
Trinca said he’s talked with senior IRS executives forced to work from home. “They’re worried about getting [the coronavirus], about giving it to their families,” he said. “I have sympathy for them; I really do.”
Kathy Hettick, former co-chair of the IRS Advisory Council and owner of Hettick Accounting & Tax LLC, said the IRS’s business operating divisions “are working seven days a week, and scrambling.”
That the IRS continues to process returns and issue refunds “is especially huge at this time” for those who need tax refunds and anticipated stimulus checks to carry them through the crisis, Hettick said. “What the IRS is expected to do is absolutely enormous given the circumstances,” she said.
In some ways, the IRS is communicating better with practitioners through the crisis, Hettick added. “This is real-time communication. I appreciate that we’re not just getting standard messaging; this is more relevant and timely,” she said.
Yet Hettick added that while the agency has been driving traffic away from its phone lines to its website, “I think the avenues are drying up that you have to speak to the IRS.”
According to Trinca, practitioners had been getting creative in working around unavailable IRS services. Denied access to e-services for processing powers of attorney and disclosure authorization forms needed to access clients’ files, some practitioners haunted practitioner priority service lines for the rare live assister who could receive and process faxed information into the centralized authorization file.
Now the practitioner priority service lines are shuttered. “From a practitioner perspective,” Trinca said, “the IRS is closed down.”