The Latest IRS Headache for Taxpayers: 11 Million 'Math Error' Notices

[Zorro]

Tax changes like the ones brought by last year’s stimulus payments often trigger a surge in such problems

Millions of Americans have gotten a scary, confusing letter from the Internal Revenue Service in 2021 saying they owe more taxes. Making matters worse, many of the letters are about stimulus payments meant to lessen the blow of the pandemic.

The explosion of IRS bills to taxpayers fall into a category known as “math-error” notices, and the IRS sent out more than 11 million of them from Jan. 1 to mid-August.

That compares with about 765,000 for the same period in pandemic-disrupted 2020 and about 2 million in 2019, according to National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins, who heads an independent unit within the IRS charged with safeguarding taxpayer rights. Ms. Collins is trying to help taxpayers who got these notices, and now several million filers will get more time to respond.

Despite their name, math-error notices aren’t just about arithmetic. Instead, they are tax adjustments for a variety of issues detected by IRS computers during return processing. They usually result in tax due, a smaller refund or even a higher refund in some cases.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-latest-irs-headache-for-taxpayers-11-million-math-error-notices-11630661402