Source: National Taxpayer Advocate’s report to Congress June 2021

The IRS Finished the Filing Season with Over 35 Million Tax Returns Awaiting Manual Reviews

“Although most taxpayers successfully filed their returns and received their refunds, a historically high number did not. At the conclusion of the filing season, the IRS faced a backlog of over 35 million individual and business income tax returns that require manual processing – meaning that employee involvement is generally needed before a return can advance to the next stage in the processing pipeline.  The backlog includes about 16.8 million paper tax returns waiting to be processed; about 15.8 million returns suspended during processing that require further review; and about 2.7 million amended returns awaiting processing. The backlog resulted largely from the pandemic-related evacuation order that restricted employee access to IRS facilities.”

Other media reports indicate that processing slowness resulted from IRS personnel working on other Covid-related projects such as stimulus payments.