If you’re stuck on hold for hours on the IRS’s customer help line, you’re probably not just behind other people with tax questions.
The queues are also jammed up with parents confused about new pandemic benefits, people missing stimulus checks, and sometimes even applicants for disaster relief from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The Covid-19 pandemic magnified longstanding structural deficiencies that hamper the IRS’s ability to fulfill its core mission of collecting revenue and enforcing tax laws—problems that money alone can’t solve. It also accelerated the agency’s transformation from being just a tax collector into a major government distributor of ...