IRS Failed to Send Child Tax Credit Payments to Millions of Households

[brooklynite]

Source: Wall Street Journal

WASHINGTON—The Internal Revenue Service sent $1.1 billion in advanced child tax credit payments during 2021 to people who shouldn’t have gotten them, and failed to send $3.7 billion to eligible households, according to an inspector general’s audit released on Tuesday.

The audit found 1.5 million taxpayers received the payments in error, and the IRS didn’t send payments to 4.1 million eligible households. Still, the agency was 98% accurate in sending more than 175 million child tax credit payments, made as part of the government’s response to the economic challenges of the coronavirus pandemic, the report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration said.

Congress expanded the child tax credit and authorized monthly payments in the March 2021 relief law signed by President Biden, giving a tax agency accustomed to annual refund payments an unprecedented test in administering monthly benefits.

The payments started that July and ended after December 2021, and Democrats haven’t been able to revive them. For the IRS, starting the monthly payments and helping households get them required an enormous information-technology and communications effort, and administration officials and lawmakers have generally praised the IRS’s work.

Read more: https://www.wsj.com/articles/irs-failed-to-send-child-tax-credit-payments-to-millions-of-households-report-finds-11664297689?mod=djemalertNEWS

[bucolic_frolic]

1. Thanks for this

My calc's didn't agree with the IRS, now I'll take a closer look ... lots of worksheets but worth the time.

Thank goodness for the Paperwork Reduction Act.

[erronis]

2. That's a real pity. The folks that needed these didn't get them, and those that got them

probably didn't need them.

If I'm a middle-income wage earner, getting a check from the government for a few hundred would be like extra gravy on my potatoes.

If I'm a struggling family with children, not getting a check that I was counting on would be a deep stab in the back.

I understand that the (r)epuglicons have intentionally crippled the IRS. Too bad their actions cause the agency to look bad.

[Marthe48]

3. Did Brett get them?

>sarcasm<

I hope they get this unsnarled fast. Maybe some families will have happier holidays.

[MichMan]

4. Are they going to make those that shouldn't have received it pay it back?

[Hugh_Lebowski]

5. My guess is that the 2% of people where there were errors ... moved, were evicted, etc

And that the checks sent to the wrong households were likely rarely cashed, because the name on the check was not the person living there.

There's not a lot of people who are going to try to cash checks from the Feds that obviously aren't meant for them.

Remember this is the WSJ, they're gonna try to make the Gubmint look as inept as possible.

I'd add that batting 1.000 on something like this program, very quickly spun up as it was ... not an easy task. I say that as someone who deals with large amounts of data for a living.

[Unwind Your Mind]

10. My first thought

Headline!! IRS Failed!

Then you have to read down to find 98% accuracy, sigh…

[pnwest]

6. As a tax preparer I can tell you with high confidence

that a LARGE percentage of those situations involved divorced couples who switch claiming the kids as dependents every other year. So if mom claimed them on her 2020 tax return, the advance child tax credit payments automatically went to her in 2021, even though it was dad’s year to claim them. It was a huuuuugge pain in the ass to resolve.

[Lonestarblue]

7. I remember when Covid checks were to go to households that the IRS advertised for COBOL

programmers. Evidently the IRS has been starved for funds by Republicans for so long that many of their systems have not been updated. The best money we could spend would be to modernize the IRS and give it true investigatory power to go after the wealthy tax cheats. Going after someone in the middle class might net a couple of hundred dollars while going after a real estate developer like Trump would likely net several million dollars.

[Evolve Dammit]

8. Well, more disturbing news. Just keeps coming, like a slow-moving train wreck.

[Evolve Dammit]

9. Not shooting the messenger BTW.

[clementine613]

11. How much of this credit money ended up in Rethug hands?

I wouldn't be surprised to find out that some Rethug Congresspeople are suddenly richer.