Tim’s Tax News on the Tenth – January 2025

The National Taxpayer Advocate, recently released her annual report to Congress. A few highlights from the report are summarized below:

1. Taxpayers and tax practitioners are supposedly receiving better service from the IRS. The Taxpayer Advocate said that the wait times to reach an IRS customer service representative have been shortened.
2. Taxpayers are supposedly receiving their income tax refund timelier.
3. The Taxpayer Advocate’s report criticized the long wait times for taxpayers to receive their legitimate Employee Retention Tax Credit Payments. There is currently a backlog of 1.2M claims. Most of these claims are taking well in excess of 1 to 2 years to process. The Service only expects to process 500K this fiscal year.
4. The problem of Identity Theft Victim Assistance has worsened in the past year. It is now taking the IRS about 24 months to handle an individual claim. This is up from 19 months in 2023. These delays affected more than 500K taxpayers last year.

 

In a matter unrelated to the Taxpayer Advocate’s report, and in follow-up to a recent TNT Article on the possible discharge of income taxes in bankruptcy - the US DOJ Tax Division stopped such relief to a married couple in Oklahoma. The couple failed to keep sufficient records, failed to file tax returns for several years, and could not satisfactorily explain their loss of $90 million in assets in the years leading up to the bankruptcy. The couple listed about $79,000 in assets and debts of more than $30 million, mostly tax liabilities to the IRS. The IRS was able to prove that they were not worthy of a fresh start.

If you would like more details, please do not hesitate to call our office. Our office has been successful in helping taxpayers with IRS and IDOR collection problems for over 31 years. If you have a tax or debt problem, please contact me at 847-705-9698 or thughes@lavellelaw.com and find out how we can help you.

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