Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), former chairman and current member of the Finance Committee, joined Ranking Member Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) and his Republican colleagues to raise concerns about the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) destruction of an estimated 30 million paper-filed documents in March 2021 – reportedly due to a backlog in processing paper documents. A Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) report brought the IRS’s destruction of the paperwork to light.
Despite repeated requests from Congress for the IRS to exercise taxpayer penalty relief due to pandemic-related problems, the agency never disclosed that it chose to destroy 30 million information returns as one of the measures taken to reduce backlogs.
“The information disclosed in the May 4 TIGTA report has surprised many in Congress and in the tax community. The destruction of documents ensuring taxpayers did not underreport income or inflate a deduction is concerning. It also raises questions about the IRS’s ability to administer the tax code and ensure compliance,” the senators wrote.
The senators ask the IRS to clarify the potential damage to tax administration this destruction will cause, as well as who made the decision, how it might impact tax revenues and how the IRS will address the consequences this decision will have for taxpayers.
This is the latest effort by Grassley to conduct IRS oversight, recently leading his colleagues in a probe of the agency following a massive taxpayer data breach that was published by ProPublica.
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