November 21, 2022

 

Dear Friends and Clients,

 

Well, the election is over, and the next years are still not completely projected. Oh, it seems as I know I have lived thru this only a couple of years ago. The future of our economy , taxes, foreign affairs, and our way of life is still in limbo and unrest.

 

IRS has not announced yet when they will begin the 2022 tax filing season, but sometime in January or early February will be for sure. They have promised great improvements in their handling of paper filed returns this year.  They have announced they will go to a scanned document with many additional lines and expanded information requested. I expect to see a draft after my update seminar in early December.

 

IRS is making strides in resolving its backlog of form 1040 returns in 2022. On July 15 they had 9.3 unprocessed paper returns and as of October 28 it had 4.4 million unprocessed 1040s, of which 2.5 million paper returns waiting to be reviewed/processed and 1.9 million requiring correction of errors. These errors can be not recording the proper amounts of stimulus checks received or advanced childcare credits and the most popular one is not presenting the preparer with the 1095A if they had healthcare thru the marketplace or Obamacare. These hold up the processing of your refund.  The treasury inspectors say the top challenge the IRS is facing is customer service, modernizing IRS aging technology, safeguarding taxpayer data, and cyberattacks, handling tax law changes, increasing enforcement to reduce the tax gap (collections), tackling identity theft, and erroneous payments of refundable credits.

 

Yesterday I spent 6 hours on hold with the IRS and talked to 3 different people to get one problem taken care for a client. So, if you still haven’t received your refunds for 2019- 2021, have other issues remaining with them or amended return still with no reply from the IRS, please send me an email and remind me of the issues, the year so I can see IF I can help resolve this.  It may mean you will have to come into the office and us wait patiently until we have a live person to talk to, but I have no other solutions. I can’t make these calls myself without power of attorney from you for the IRS. 

 

My staff, Sybil, Donze, and myself have tried to respond as quickly and efficiently as we can but we are very limited on what we can do. The IRS says to do this as below:

1. Check www.irs.gov (Where’s my refund?) If there is no information available, then I don’t have any further information.

2. Call the IRS- you can wait 3 – 6 hours but my coffee pot was hot.

3. If you are suffering financial hardship, call the IRS’s taxpayer advocate service.  My luck with that for a client, if they hadn’t missed a house payment or was not homeless, they couldn’t help me and they hung up on me.

4. Contact your congressional representatives.  I’ve not tried this because it’s going to be phone calls and IRS is not going to be able to pull your return out of the millions still to be done.

 

There are two things the IRS says NOT to do: Don’t write to IRS about your late refund and don’t file a second tax return or an amended return for 2021.  They will get put on the bottom of the stack and just add to the unprocessed returns. And finally: don’t call me for some magic phone number or if I can find out something because I have NO special powers.

We are asking you to help us help you. We have enclosed with the only newsletter you’ll receive this year.  We don’t anticipate any late acted law changes.  What laws  we have are good thru 2025 unless the new Congress in 2023 – 25 makes changes.  I have highlighted on the 2022-23 tax changes any new adjustments we know of so far.  You must have filled out the checklist and update list for us and answer the questions and attach the needed information before you come in for our appointment.  If it isn’t filled out, you won’t get to my office.  We schedule appointments as requested for the amount of time needed. If you want to be charged by the form which will start at $185 for a federal and NC return and added to as schedules get added or I can charge you at my hourly rate of $225/hr. or $100 for a 30-minute consultation.

 

There are so many areas that I must watch for than ever before, so the time must be devoted to tax preparation only.  In the last 2 years I have had COVID-19 twice, this year in 3 months I lost a brother-in-law (Paul Moberg), my eldest sister (Nanette Ricker, 79) who lived in Nashville and my mother (Betty Burchett, 99) who was 4  months shy of 100. You have seen each one of them at many of many events over the years. I know many of you will ask me how my mother is doing so I thought I would let you know now.  This has been very, very hard on me and stressful.  I’m taking off the month of December to handle personal things, doctor’s appointments that got pushed back , and generally some time to myself.  Either Sybil or I will come to the office 1 day a week to check on messages and respond to client needs. I appreciate all the condolences and sympathy passed on to me and I’m trying to get myself healthy and happy again, so that’s why I need time off.

 

That’s all folks & See you Soon!

Joyce and Staff @Burchett Financial Services