I know, you are not supposed to kick a guy who’s already down.

But, what happens if that guy (or, in these cases, agencies) still send tormenting notices to you all the time?

Literally, every single year, we receive a notice from the Social Security Administration that we haven’t properly filed our client’s W2 and W3 forms with the agency.

Which means we must log onto their system (and since they demand new passwords every 90 days), we must come up with a new password [can’t repeat them] and then go through the log-on process again.  Then, find the client’s data in question.  And, what a surprise- there is the submission, perfect and complete.

That alone would be annoying.  (Since we file manifold W2s with the Social Security Administration (SSA)- and the agency doesn’t save the files under the SSN or client name [which requires us to go through submission after submission) until we find the one, two, or three listed in the notice).  Then, we download the file and send it back to the Social Security Administration notifying them of the error of their ways.

Do they acknowledge that?  Do they apologize?  Yeah, you know the answer.

That’s only part of the problem.  Because  the SSA will routinely report those same clients to the IRS saying the W2 data is  not correct.  So, we have to go to the SSA, download the file, and send that same file to the IRS.

But, to be honest, we know that’s a waste of time.

Because we MUST submit these responses via paper.  And, the IRS simply doesn’t process paper.

As a matter of fact, the IRS has an increased backlog of unprocessed documents.  Instead of catching up, they are falling further behind.  The current tally of unprocessed returns is 21.3 million.  That more than 1 million more than were unprocessed a year ago!

For example, during the month of May (2022), the IRS processed some 205,000 individual tax returns (Form 1040) weekly.   To catch up, the IRS must process more than twice that number- 500K- or the backlog will keep growing.

But, let’s get back to those letters that I have to write to the IRS.  It’s taking an average of 251 days (that’s more than 8 months) to get them processed.  As a comparison, the IRS took 74 days to do that in 2019.  That’s simply unacceptable.

And, then there’s those taxpayers who have had their identity stolen.  A rough guess is that the total is about 336,000 folks.  They must submit affidavits (and more), Form 14039.   These folks have to wait an average of a year (to be specific, 360 days) to get their situation handled.  That’s a long time to wait for a refund!

Of course, there’s always that phone call to the IRS.  Like they really will answer.  These numbers above make the situation plain.

Can we fund these agencies so that we don’t have to repeat our work?