(Joshua Paladino, Headline USA) Four anonymous sources claimed that in the coming months the Internal Revenue Service plans to hire 10,000 more tax collectors to fill positions that have sat vacant for years.
The increased hiring will help eliminate a multi-year backlog, according to the Washington Post. The IRS has accumulated about 24 million unprocessed tax returns and unresolved correspondence since 2020.
One anonymous official said the IRS hopes to resolve the backlog by the year’s end. The sources said that the IRS needs to fill 80 different kinds of jobs, ranging from general, entry-level office jobs to tax attorneys and engineers.
Before the IRS catches up on the backlog, it needs technical experts to create a modernized system to replace its outdated infrastructure.
Bipartisan members of Congress called on the IRS in January to “provide penalty relief for taxpayers” due to its inability to process tax returns in a timely manner. In many cases, the IRS has not yet processed emergency loans and exemptions related to the COVID-19 lockdowns.
“…applications for emergency loans from the Small Business Administration have been caught in limbo nearly two years after the COVID-19 pandemic began,” the congress members wrote in a letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.
The Washington Post‘s anonymous sources said that the IRS will pay for the new recruits over the next two years with money in its existing budget and with additional money from the COVID-19 spending spree.
The new hires would boost the IRS workforce by 14 percent. In the past decade, the IRS has lost about 15 percent of its employees, including 25 percent of those involved in tax enforcement.
In the failed Build Back Better Act, President Joe Biden had proposed that the IRS receive an additional $80 in funding over 10 years. This hiring spree will be more limited.
