(PresidentialWire.com)- People who have individual taxpayer identification numbers and have been affected by the significant processing delays at the Internal Revenue Service are urged by a group of Democrats in the Senate to ask the Internal Revenue Service to extend the filing deadline for them.
Sen. Bob Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey and senior member of the Senate Finance Committee, which has oversight of the IRS, led the group in writing a letter to IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, in which they pointed out that many eligible ITIN filers have been unable to file for the enhanced child tax credit as a result of the processing delays. Menendez is a senior member of the Senate Finance Committee, which has oversight of the IRS.
However, many families did not receive their ITIN before April 15, 2022, despite submitting their application on time, putting them at a disadvantage in accessing the tax credit. The current law mandates that an ITIN must be issued on or before the due date of the tax return to file for the CTC. According to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration and the Internal Revenue Service’s website, the time it takes to process an ITIN application has increased to an average of three to four months, while the time it takes to renew an ITIN has doubled to 41 days from what it was before the pandemic.
Sen. Menendez has long criticized the IRS’s customer service and backlogs. Sen. Menendez joined more than 100 Senate and House colleagues in a bipartisan effort to confront IRS Commissioner Rettig on the agency’s lack of a clear strategy to fix taxpayer problems. Sen. Menendez and Rep. Spanberger spearheaded a bipartisan campaign in February to urge the IRS to minimize its backlog and enhance customer service for the 2022 tax filing season. Shortly after mailing the letter, the IRS launched a second surge team to aid with backlogs and improve customer service. The Senator led another letter requesting the IRS to postpone its long-standing intention to shutter the Austin Tax Processing Center as the agency faced rising delays in processing unprocessed tax returns and ITIN applications.
