News

Washington, D.C. – Congressman Darin LaHood (IL-18), a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, including the Subcommittee on Tax, urged the U.S. Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to address the over 16 million outstanding tax returns and provide relief to taxpayers as the 2022 filing season begins. In a statement, Rep. LaHood said: 

"The ongoing IRS return processing backlog and related customer service failures have reached crisis levels as the new filing season begins. The backlog, with some folks still waiting on returns from the 2020 filing season, is causing unnecessary burdens for families and small businesses in Illinois. That's why I have requested information from the Treasury and the IRS on how they intend to address these failures and encouraged them to provide relief for Illinois residents. As a member on the Ways and Means Committee, I will continue to work to deliver answers for taxpayers."

In December, Rep. LaHood joined 99 House Republicans to request IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig to provide information on how the agency plans to resolve its filing backlog process and provide additional resources for the 2022 tax filing season.

This week, Rep. LaHood led nearly 200 bipartisan members of the House of Representatives to urge the U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to give taxpayers a break on penalties from the IRS because of mail delays. 

In the letter, the members recommend that the IRS: 

• Delay collection of penalties from people waiting for the agency to process active and pending penalty abatement requests.
• Streamline the process for taxpayers affected by the pandemic to show reasonable cause for penalty abatement, without the need for written correspondence.
• Lift penalties for taxpayers who paid at least 70 percent of taxes they owed each of the past two years.
• Speed up processing of amended returns.
• More quickly answer inquiries from congressional caseworkers and the Taxpayer Advocate Service.

###