• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Edmundson CPA, PLLC

Formerly Edmundson & Company, CPAs

  • Home
  • About Us ▼
    • About Us
    • Hours
    • Drew Bio
    • Policies
    • Contact us
  • Services ▼
    • Tax planning
    • Accounting
    • Tax Preparation
    • Consulting
  • Newsletters
  • Blog
  • Client forms
  • Links
  • Secure Portal
  • Sitemap
You are here: Home / Archives for filing statistics

filing statistics

August 20, 2015 By

IRS taxpayer service declines

The Taxpayer Advocate released their mid-year report on how the tax season went. “Likening the 2015 filing season to ‘A Tale of Two Cities,’ however, the report says:  ‘For the majority of taxpayers who filed their returns and did not require IRS assistance, the filing season was generally successful.  For the segment of taxpayers who required help from the IRS, the filing season was by far the worst in memory.’” This is even worse than last year’s report detailed in this post – IRS doing more with less?

Highlights

  • IRS processed 126.1 million individual returns versus 125.6 million the prior year.
  • The average refund was up slightly to $2,711 from $2,686 the prior year but about 3 million taxpayers received a refund this year.
  • Hold times for taxpayers were 23 minutes versus 14 minutes the prior year.
  • Sadly, only 37% of taxpayer calls were answered versus 71% the prior year. Answered means the taxpayer talked to a human and does not mean the taxpayer was actually helped.
  • Supposedly the IRS Taxpayer Advocate is a taxpayer’s last hope at IRS. With hold times of 19 minutes and only 39% of calls answered taxpayers seem to have little hope.
  • Tax practitioners have their own hotline to speed up service to them. Apparently 45 minutes on hold is faster than the 23 minutes non-tax practitioners received. Must be the newer “new math.” The IRS did answer 45% of tax practitioners calls which is better than for individuals but that may be because they held longer.
  • IRS is trying to introduce a new term to the average American – “courtesy disconnect.” It means the IRS hung up on us. What a polite way to say “we do not care.” About 8.8 million of use were shown this “courtesy” this year versus only 544,000 last year. If you get hung up on by the IRS you can no longer even consider yourself special.

Incentivizing taxpayers to cheat?

The news release says:

Olson wrote that the decline in taxpayer service imposes increased compliance burdens on taxpayers and may lead to erosion in taxpayer trust.  “For a tax system that relies on voluntary self-assessment by its taxpayers, none of this bodes well,” she wrote.  “In fact, there is a real risk that the inability of taxpayers to obtain assistance from the government, and their consequent frustration, will lead to less voluntary compliance and more enforced compliance.

I read that to mean the Taxpayer Advocate would not be surprised if people throw up their hands and do what they think is best for them instead of trying to figure out the law and the forms.

Long-term plan concerns

According to the report, IRS’ long-term plan is too heavy on enforcement and too light on customer service. Additionally, the IRS’ is pushing too much online taxpayer service and cutting back on human assistance. For a hint on a better way to search the IRS website see the Website section of this post – Get IRS help by appointment.

Identity theft protection

OK your identity has been stolen and someone is using your information to get a tax refund. From my experience, this is an extremely stressful situation for most people. So how does IRS help?

If someone else uses your Social Security Number before you file, expect to wait an average of six months for a refund. If you owe, do not worry they will promptly take your payment. If an IRS’ fraud filter incorrectly flags your return, IRS makes you wait an average of 28 minutes to speak to someone and “courtesy disconnects” 83% of callers. The good news is IRS is catching more fraudulent returns before sending refunds. The bad news is IRS’ fraud filters are flagging more legitimate returns – over 600,000 this year.

Obamacare problems

Not surprisingly, there were quite a few problems caused by the new Affordable Care Act (ACA) provisions. Interestingly, the Taxpayer Advocate attributes many of them to other parties. For example, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services sent out about 800,000 erroneous Forms 1095-A regarding health care acquired through the ACA exchange.

Conclusion

Considering the 17% inflation adjusted budget cut IRS has experienced since 2010, the problems with answering the phone are not surprising. I discussed the IRS budget earlier in this post. Of course, if IRS would stop shooting themselves in the foot they could do a better job with their existing budget. A bit more money to customer service and less to enforcement might actually be profitable.

 

Filed Under: Tax Tagged With: 2014, filing statistics, Individuals, IRS, Preparers

September 24, 2014 By

2012 Individual tax statistics

Ever wonder how your Zip Code or County compares to others? You can now download data for 2012 by either county or zip code. The county data is here and the zip code data is here. The data is available in CSV and Excel format.

Description Nation NC Wake
Returns filed 144,276,120 4,285,200 446,420
Adjusted gross income (AGI) $9,014,833,762,000 $229,816,792,000 $32,882,835,000
AGI per filer $62,483 $53,630 $73,659
Unemployment reported 11,431,220 345,730 27,580
Alternative minimum tax paid (1) 4,207,380 100,400 20,590
Earned income tax credit (2) 24,271,200 (16.8%) 949,940 (22.2%) 65,970 (14.8%)
Some tax liability 105,014,850 (72.8%) 2,993,570 (70%) 340,410 (76.3%)
Tax per return $8,589 $6,412 $10,156
Tax per return paying tax $11,800 $9,179 $13,319

All dollar amounts have a dollar sign ($) in front. The rest of the numbers are the number of returns reporting that item.

On average, NC filers earned less than the country, paid less tax (makes sense since they had less income), and a higher percent of North Carolinians claimed the earned income tax credit. On the other hand, Wake taxpayers on average did better than the nation as a whole.

(1) The alternative minimum tax was devised to make sure rich people claiming a lot of deductions still paid some tax. It no longer works that way.

(2) The earned income credit is a credit paid to the working poor, especially those with children.

Filed Under: Tax Tagged With: filing statistics, Individuals, IRS

February 21, 2014 By

Higher average IRS refund so far

U.S. Currency – Wikimedia Commons

The IRS announced on February 20, 2014 that the average refund of $3,211 is up $190 from the same period last year (period ending February 14th). IRS issued 15 percent more refunds this year than last and saw a less than on percent drop in electronic filing.

IRS processed slightly over 38 million returns by February 14. This is up over 7.5 million from the prior year. Perhaps not having last minute income tax law changes by Congress is helping to speed things up. Taxpayers and IRS both have a bit more certainty. This allows IRS to finalize forms and provide guidance earlier. Taxpayers benefit from having more time to understand their filing requirements. If only Congress had not caused the government shutdown last fall, perhaps we would be even further ahead of last year.

You can find the entire report on the IRS’ website.

Wondering where your refund is? You can check with IRS online. The site is only updated once a day, typically overnight so there is no reason to check repeatedly on a particular day.

You can check your NC refund status here.

Filed Under: Tax Tagged With: filing statistics, where's my refund

Primary Sidebar

Recent Posts

  • Tax Season in the Era of the Coronavirus
  • Foreign financial filing due (FinCen 114)
  • NC extensions denied in error
  • Forms 1099 due by 03/31/2016!
  • Valuing noncash contributions

Categories

Tags

2014 ACA business taxes C Corporation Charitable contributions corporation Donations due dates Electronic filing Electronic payments entity choice estate expiring tax provisions filing statistics FinCen 114 Foreign form of business healthcare Income tax organizer Individuals IRA IRS IRS waste liability protection LLC mileage NC taxes new taxes Obamacare occupancy taxes Our firm Pay IRS Preparers Sales taxes SBA S Corporation signature Tax deductions tax extenders tax planning vehicle taxes where's my refund will withholding year-end

Edmundson CPA, PLLC

102 Commonwealth Court
Suite J,
Cary, NC 27511-4437
Phone: (919) 460-9966
Fax: (919) 380-0010
Email: info@nccpa.com

Footer

Edmundson CPA, PLLC

102 Commonwealth Court
Suite J,
Cary, NC 27511-4437
Phone: (919) 460-9966
Email: info@nccpa.com

Hours

Office hours

Search

Categories

  • Business
  • Financial
  • Firm
  • QuickBooks
  • Tax
FACEBOOK ·TWITTER ·LINKEDIN Copyright © 1998–2021 · Terms and conditions