IRS Tax Filing Delay is for Them, Not You
The government shutdown has led to the IRS’ recent announcement that it will delay the start of the 2014 tax filing season at least a week and likely more. The tax season was scheduled to begin on January 21, 2014. This delay provides the IRS with needed time to program and test tax-processing systems, efforts which were interrupted while the thousands of IRS employees were furloughed October 1-16th of this year. According to the IRS announcement:
“The government closure came during the peak period for preparing IRS systems for the 2014 filing season. Programming, testing and deployment of more than 50 IRS systems is needed to handle processing of nearly 150 million tax returns. Updating these core systems is a complex, year-round process with the majority of the work beginning in the fall of each year.
About 90 percent of IRS operations were closed during the shutdown, with some major workstreams closed entirely during this period, putting the IRS nearly three weeks behind its tight timetable for being ready to start the 2014 filing season. There are additional training, programming and testing demands on IRS systems this year in order to provide additional refund fraud and identity theft detection and prevention.”
However, the IRS has made it clear that any such delay would not impact the April 15 tax filing deadline for taxpayers.
Renee Howdeshell
Renee Howdeshell is a founding member of Fulcrum Inquiry, an accounting, finance and economic consulting firm that performs damage analyses for commercial litigation, forensic accountings, royalty & distribution audits, financial investigations, and business valuations. Ms. Howdeshell holds a degree in Finance and Marketing from the University of Virginia's McIntire School of Commerce and is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and a Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE). She has testified as an expert witness in federal court, CA state court and arbitration regarding the results of her work. She can be reached at (213) 787-4112 and her resume is available at www.fulcrum.com.
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