11,000 IRS employees returning to work
Roughly 11,000 IRS employees are returning to their offices. They face millions of unopened mail documents and tax returns that have accumulated during covid-19. The IRS has focused this reopening in the three states (Kentucky, Utah, and Texas) where the agency processes much of the mail and paper tax returns it receives. There were 4.7 million tax returns to process and a total of 10 million pieces of unopened mail as of May 16th.
There was a recent incident in Kansas City, Mo., in which an IRS employee tested positive for Covid-19 days after voluntarily returning to the office. The agency was then forced to shut down the facility for several days while it underwent a deep cleaning.
If you are claiming the earned income tax credit, your refund might be held up. This can happen if your tax return has been “flagged” by the agency’s refund fraud detection filters even though half the time the filter is a false alert.
