Early Birds Must Be Patient: Government Closure Pushes Back 2014 Tax Season Start
The government shutdown will have a ripple effect into next year. The IRS announced a delay of about one to two weeks to the start of the 2014 filing season. The agency needs the extra time to double-check its tax processing systems since the federal government was M.I.A. for 16 days.
Think government computers should be able to handle anything, no problem? Basically, fifty core IRS systems have to be able to process 150 million tax returns with no glitches. Updating these systems is a really confusing, year-round process with most of the work starting in the fall – in other words, right when the government stopped dead in its tracks.
About 90 percent of IRS operations were closed during the shutdown. Stir in the fact that this year there were already extra programming demands on IRS systems, to provide more refund fraud and identity theft detection and prevention, and you’ve got yourself a recipe for delay. The original start date of the 2014 filing season was Jan. 21. Now the IRS won’t start accepting 2013 individual tax returns until sometime between Jan. 28 and Feb. 4.
Sending tax returns via snail mail won’t bypass the delay either: the IRS won’t process paper tax returns before the postponed start date. And there’s no point in doing that since taxpayers will receive their tax refunds much faster by using e-file with direct deposit. Looking further down the road, the April 15 tax deadline is set by statute, so that won’t get pushed back even with the late start.
The IRS is up and running after the 16-day downtime and is putting in work to catch up on the 400,000 pieces of paperwork that piled up during the closure. Stir in the 1 million items already being processed before the shutdown, along with the heavy demand on phone lines and walk-in sites, and you’ve got yourself another recipe, this time for a headache. The IRS encourages taxpayers to wait to call or visit if their issue is not urgent, and to use automated applications on IRS.gov. Don’t rush if you don’t have to: set your briefcase down and take a minute to smell the autumnal air before you continue on your busy day.
Addendum: And that’s not all that was delayed folks. The PTIN renewal season was supposed to start on October 16, but nothing could happen because the IRS was closed. Luckily the agency got things back on track and the PTIN Renewal Season for 2014 officially began on October 30. That means about 690,000 federal tax return preparers have two months – from now until December 31 – to go online and renew their PTIN’s. Anyone who doesn’t and still wants to make money preparing federal returns, will be out of a job come New Year’s.
Sufen Wang, M.S. Accountancy
Wang Solutions, Long Beach, CA (562) 856-0793
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