Millions of Americans will sit down to file their taxes in the next few years.
Rachel Cannistraro is stuck in 2020.
The 40-year-old Wisconsin-based accountant hasn't received her amended return from last year. She filed it on March 28, 2021. The IRS hasn't processed it yet.
Cannistraro, a mother of three, didn't get the advanced child-tax-credit checks that started going out monthly to parents last summer. She will still get that money when she files her return this year, but having an additional $300 a month in advance would have been helpful to her. She had to use credit cards and dip into her savings to pay her bills.
Cannistraro said she is waiting for $6,000 with the advanced child tax credit and the refund.
Cannistraro said she and her husband are fortunate to have good jobs.
Cannistraro isn't the only one: the national taxpayer advocate, a position that's known as the "voice of the taxpayer" within the IRS, said that the agency is. Both Collins and Treasury officials pointed to the underfunding of the agency as the root cause of the backlogs. According to the Tax Policy Center, the IRS's budget has declined over the last decade.
The government has stripped the IRS of so much funding over the years.
Cannistraro has always done the family's taxes. She said that 2020 was kind of a crazy year, with some additional information coming in after she initially filed. She had to file an amended return for the first time.
She said that the IRS website said it would take at least 16 weeks for an amended return to show up. She put that date in her calendar.
She called the number on the IRS website to get help.
It would ring and then say, "Oh, we have high call volume." It would hang up if you called back later.
She couldn't leave a message. She tried to contact the agency on social media. Cannistraro reached out to her senator and congressman in October.
Several others had reached out to her with similar issues. The processing issue was caused by the fact that Cannistraro hadn't received the latest check as part of her initial return. She said that the check came a week after she filed.
Cannistraro said that they didn't process his amended return because they were investigating the fact that he had receivedStimulus or not.
She gave the requested paperwork to the congressman so he could process it. Cannistraro said she has not heard anything else since the IRS.
The worst thing about this is that there is no communication from the IRS. We are not getting letters or phone calls. Cannistraro said that no one would answer the phone if you tried to call them.
Cannistraro said that workers are leaving their jobs in droves in search of better-paying or more flexible work.
She said that with the budget cuts that the IRS has faced, you're not gonna get quality employees if you don't have the budget to pay them.
Cannistraro and millions of others are still waiting for her to come back. She will use the money to pay off credit-card debt, and if there is any left over, she will spend it on therapy toys for her son.
Folks are out here waiting for the money that is due to them and, on top of that, they are not going to be compensated for it.
Penalties and fees are due to the IRS when someone is late with a tax payment. Cannistraro said she won't get any interest or fees for having her payment held up over the processing delay, something she thinks should be corrected in policy.
I should have gotten a letter from the IRS back in July that said something was amiss and I should call this number and talk to my congressman. They have bigger things to deal with.
Are you still waiting? Do you depend on your refund? The reporter can be contacted at jkaplan@insider.com.
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