American taxpayers got an extra three months from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to pay their taxes this year, but this act of bureaucratic largesse didn’t benefit many people who filed their returns long before the usual April 15 deadline. They are still awaiting refunds, The Washington Post reported. For the most part, the IRS stopped processing paper returns around March 30 because of the novel coronavirus. Some work was curtailed even earlier. “Yes, some paper returns filed early in the season have not yet been processed,” IRS spokesman Eric Smith said. “We have been hearing this from a number of folks and very much understand that people are concerned. We are continuing to whittle away at our paper inventory.” The coronavirus-related chaos that has marred this year’s tax season should give people who still mail paper tax returns additional incentive to switch to electronic filing. The agency began a phased reopening on June 1, with employees working to dig out from under a backlog of mail. “Even now, we’re still not at 100% staffing,” Smith said. As of the week ending July 4, the agency estimates that it had 7.8 million pieces of mail correspondence, which includes about 3.6 million unopened returns, Smith said. “These are not exact figures, and because both paper and electronic returns continue to come in, it’s very much a moving target,” he said. “So, we don’t yet have an estimated date of when the backlog will be completed.”
