Tax Filing Season at Risk of Delay as Budget Talks Drag
The Internal Revenue Service is tracking congressional budget squabbles as the agency tries to determine if it can start the tax filing season on time in mid- January.
With fewer than two weeks left in the year, Congress hasn’t prevented expansion of the alternative minimum tax for 2012. Unless lawmakers act, tax filing for more than one-third of taxpayers might be delayed until at least late March.
For one thing, 32 million taxpayers collectively would owe $92 billion more in taxes if a so-called AMT patch isn’t enacted. Further, inaction would require the IRS to reprogram and test its computer systems. Officials must gauge by early January whether Congress is likely to act on the AMT, as it routinely has done in past years.
“It’s a very challenging situation,” said Linda Stiff, a former acting IRS commissioner and now a managing director at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP in Washington. “This country has a really strong system of voluntary compliance and that’s kind of built for decades around people knowing what’s going to happen from January to April.”
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-19/tax-filing-season-at-risk-of-delay-as-budget-talks-drag.html
