IRS Announces Delay To Start Of The 2013 Tax Season!

It’s the gift that keeps on giving. Remember the government  shutdown that ended last week? It seems the effects of that little  debacle  are rippling through the American tax system.

The Internal Revenue Service says the shutdown – and the furlough of  federal workers that it mandated – meant that the IRS lost valuable time it would have used to program and test its tax processing systems. So  the official start of filing, which would have been Jan. 21, 2014, will  now be pushed back one or two
weeks. That means filing won’t start any  earlier than Jan. 28, and could start as late as Feb. 4.

Very Bad Timing.

About 90 percent of IRS operations were closed during the shutdown –  and some major work projects were shut down entirely, putting the IRS  nearly three weeks behind its timetable for the start of the 2014 tax  season. The agency had big plans to add additional refund fraud and  identity theft detection to the tax system, so there are extra training, programming and testing demands on the system this year.

Acting IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel says the delay simply gives the IRS the time it needs to get ready.

“Readying our systems to handle the tax season is an intricate,  detailed process, and we must take the time to get it right,” Werfel  said. “The adjustment to the start of the filing season provides us the  necessary time to program, test and validate our systems so that we can  provide a smooth filing and refund process for the nation’s taxpayers.  We want the public and tax professionals to know about the delay well in  advance so they can prepare for a later start of the filing season.”

Early Birds Get No Worm. Werfel says taxpayers who attempt to send in paper returns before the announced start date will not get quicker attention. No returns will be processed before that new start date. In fact, the IRS is still digging out from the mountain of paperwork it got during the shutdown. The  agency had about a
million items being processed before the government  shutdown – and another 400,000 came in while workers were on furlough.

For now the bottom line is to use IRS automated systems whenever  possible if you need assistance. The human-powered help lines are going  to be very busy as they dig out of the shutdown’s backlog. Werfel urges  patience. And that may be the best advice of all.