The Internal Revenue Service is facing a backlog of 35 million unprocessed tax returns, according to a government watchdog, as the pandemic and economic relief efforts combined to overwhelm the agency and force some people to spend hours chasing their overdue refunds. One of their most important phone lines - the 1040 customer support lines for individual tax returns - reported that only three per cent of the 85 million callers got through to a human being. Another 2.7 million amended tax returns have not been processed. The statement also said some of the returns counted by the advocate 'does not necessarily reflect unprocessed tax returns,' citing as many as 2.1 million individual and business tax returns are related to identity theft cases. The overwhelming majority of the 35 million unprocessed returns are for the 2020 filing season that were filed in 2021.

Source: Daily Mail July 06, 2021 01:07 UTC