IRS to Provide Automatic Penalty Relief Next Filing Season

The IRS will automatically apply penalty waivers for certain taxpayers who failed to pay, file, or deposit starting for the upcoming filing season, National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins said.

Typically, the IRS will remove penalties if a taxpayers doesn’t file, pay, or deposit and it’s the first time it’s happened in the last three years. Taxpayers have to opt in.

“It’s about a million taxpayers a year who qualified that don’t receive it, and when we did the financial breakdown, the overwhelming majority were lower income folks,” Collins said Tuesday at an American Institute of CPAs conference.

• Collins has advocated ...