IRS Tops List of Busy Season Problems

Forget COVID. The underfunded, understaffed, underequipped, underappreciated, misunderstood IRS is the top problem.

By CPA Trendlines

It probably won’t surprise you that the CPA Trendlines Busy Season Barometer identifies IRS operations as the biggest problem tax practitioners face today. In fact, we’ve never seen such widespread agreement among respondents—an astonishing 80 percent of them.

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That consensus indicates that there really is a problem at the IRS. It’s underfunded, understaffed, underequipped, and, at this point, underappreciated and misunderstood.

The real problem is that the problem is creating problems. IRS staff can’t keep up with correspondence, yet the computers, even though working off an operating system that dates back to the Kennedy administration, keep churning out moot notices and undeserved penalties.