WASHINGTON – 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.
The full text of the letter is available
HERE.
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