Tim’s Tax News on the Tenth – September 2024

Identity Theft

In two unrelated stories, the IRS was criticized by the National Taxpayer Advocate in her report to Congress that the IRS is failing to assist victims of identity theft with receiving their tax refunds. The National Taxpayer Advocate’s report highlighted significant delays that identity theft victims face when trying to resolve their cases and receive their refunds. As of April 2024, the IRS took over 22 months on average to resolve identity theft cases, leaving approximately 500,000 cases unresolved. This continues to be an ongoing issue, with last year's report showing similar delays. Despite efforts by the IRS to address these problems, the backlog remains substantial.

In response to the National Taxpayer Advocate’s comments, the IRS acknowledged the challenges but emphasized ongoing efforts to improve services, particularly in reducing the identity theft backlog and enhancing phone service capabilities. The IRS has been utilizing funds from the Inflation Reduction Act to address these issues and trying to improve overall taxpayer services.

Crackdown on Scofflaws

In a recent news release from the IRS, not related to the National Taxpayer Advocate’s report, the IRS announced that it had collected $1.3 billion from wealthy individuals who have avoided paying taxes for the past few years. IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel made the announcement, citing "new milestones" under the Inflation Reduction Act and how they have worked to ensure that wealthy individuals pay taxes.

"The IRS in February 2024 launched an initiative to pursue 125,000 high-income, high-wealth taxpayers who have not filed taxes since 2017," the IRS said in the announcement. "These are cases where the IRS has received third-party information—such as through Forms W-2 and 1099s—indicating these people received income between $400,000 and $1 million or more than $1 million but failed to file a tax return. Prior to the Inflation Reduction Act, the IRS non-filer program ran sporadically since 2016 due to severe budget and staff limitations that did not allow these cases to be pursued."

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 30 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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