Washington Post opinion writer Catherine Rampell, in her January 13 column, lays out some reasons why Americans can expect this tax season to be especially bad. “While tax season is never exactly a barrel of laughs, for many taxpayers, this year could shape up to be the filing season from hell,” Rampell warns. COVID-19, which originated in Wuhan, China in late 2019, has killed more than 5.5 million people worldwide and over 846,000 people in the United States, according to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. “Many were desperate to reach someone, anyone, because they had questions about how to abide by the law, given pandemic-era changes to the tax code,” Rampell notes. Normally, the IRS starts the season with about 1 million pieces of backlogged documents; this year, Treasury officials say, they have ‘several times’ that amount.

Source: Washington Post January 14, 2022 15:18 UTC