IRS Destroys Millions Of Tax Documents
Here’s what happened…
In a shocking new discovery, it has just been discovered that the Internal Revenue Service destroyed around 30 million paper-filed information return documents in March 2021 because they were struggling heavily to deal with the massive backlog of paperwork.
According to the Fiscal Times, the IRS said in a statement that Americans taxpayers “have not been and will not be subject to penalties resulting from this action.”
The IRS further explained that they processed 3.2 billion information returns in 2020 and that the documents they destroyed were not tax returns but documents submitted to the IRS by third-party payors.
They explained that only 1% of all their documents “were destroyed due to a software limitation and to make room for new documents relevant to the pending 2021 filing season.”
The IRS said they were forced to do this because “this situation reflects the significant issues posed by antiquated IRS technology.”
Tax preparers on the other hand were outraged after learning about the destroyed documents.
Vice President of taxation at the American Institute of CPAs Edward Karl stated, “IRS management’s decision to destroy information return documents due to the processing backlog raised numerous questions regarding IRS’ decision making and risk assessment process. The IRS’ recent statement provided some of the answers, but American taxpayers deserve to know why this decision was made and how it might impact them.”
