congress is back today. follow them alive when members come in at noon eastern. the senate also returning at 12:00 p.m. to begin debate on voting rights package that would restore certain provisions of the 1965 voting rights act and create new federal mandates for early voting, alec drop boxes -- ballot drop boxes. it is likely to fall short of the 60 votes necessary for democrats consider a change to filibuster rules but senators joe manchin of west virginia and kyrsten sinema of arizona have expressed opposition to the idea at which would prevent voting rights package to be passed by a simple majority. you can follow the senate live on c-span2. s happy to welcome

back nina olson to the program. she is the current executive director of the center for taxpayer rights and the former irs national taxpayer advocate. it was the current advocate who painted a dire picture of the state of the irs. some numbers from a report to congress, eight .6 million unprocessed individual returns. 2.8 million unprocessed business returns. 5 million pieces of unanswered mail waiting at the irs. what does that all mean for the average american on april 15? guest: it means the irs like last year is entering the filing season very far behind, and it means that there are not enough employees this year that were able to get through that work and certainly not enough employees this coming year to get through this work, and so if taxpayer returns are perfect,

they will go through the submission filing pipeline swimmingly. if there is a problem, and there are many problems -- many places we can talk over the next few minutes where a return will get stopped and it requires manual review, and there has to be a human being looking at it before that return can get back in the filing season -- filing system. that means there could be a chokepoint and a taxpayer's return will be stuck and refunds will not be issued. 75% of tax returns result in a refund. in this pandemic economy, it is important to be able to get your refund timely. it means a lot to taxpayers. host: you mentioned chatting over the course of the next 45 minutes. it is the best part when we have you on, getting the chance to tact -- getting the chance to chat with taxpayers. (202)-748-8000 if you are in the

eastern or central time zones and (202)-748-8001 if you are in the mountain or pacific time zones. i mentioned your position as executive director at the center for taxpayer rights. explain what that is. guest: the day after i retired from the irs in 2019, i founded a nonprofit called the center for taxpayer rights. the mission is to promote awareness and access to taxpayer rights both in the united states and internationally. we do that through holding conferences, workshops, educating taxpayers, filing litigation in the courts related to taxpayer rights and right now for the filing season, we are working on creating a website just to give taxpayer some information. the webpage will be no daschle be called -- webpage will be

called knowyourrights. you can find out where you might be able to go for help and assistance. you could go to a low income taxpayer clinic if your income meets certain eligibility guidelines. host: on educating taxpayers, anything notably different this year, after another year of pandemic? guest: the irs has been saying this but it is true. last year, the irs issued 13 million era notices where there was something the irs was seeing as wrong with the return and they could automatically adjust the return without giving the taxpayer basically an opportunity first to respond. they send out a letter saying we adjusted your return and if you disagree, call us. the percentage of calls being answered are about 9% to 19% at any given time during the year.

in the 2020 filing season, there were only about 700,000 era notices issued and in 2021, 13 million, of which 11 million were attributable to the reconciliation of the economic impact payment and recovery rebate credit. in 2020, there were two economic impact payments paid out. people may got confused about whether they received one or did not receive one but irs records show they received the payment. when they filed their return saying they got this much in economic impact payment, the irs is looking at the system saying you are wrong and we are shuffling your return over to error resolution and it can sit there up to 120 days before somebody gets around to look at it, and then you still have to

communicate with error resolution to get the problem resolved. this filing season, we have one economic impact payment that was issued in 2021, but we also have the advanced child tax credit that was paid out during the second half of the year. those are payments, paid in advance you will have to report on your return and if you don't report them correctly or at least correctly according to the irs, that is going to mean your return will be moved to error resolution and could be delayed for significant amounts of time. host: when you go from 700,000 of those kinds of adjustments to 13 million in one year, there is clearly a communication issue. is the irs doing anything to try and head that off this time around? guest: congress mandated that for the economic impact payment, they irs had to send a letter out for the end of january

saying this is the amount of economic impact payment you received. for the advanced child tax credit, the irs was required to send out a form that report of the amount of advance tile -- child tax credit and the number of children for which you received that tax credit. if they get something from the irs that says important tax information inside, they need to open it and not throw it away and they should save it to give to their return preparer. that is not going to help the people where the irs says you got this much in payment when in fact you didn't receive it for one reason or another. you are going to have to file your return saying what you think you received and then claim the rest of the credit, but just know that it may get held up and you need to be prepared with documentation to show you didn't get that payment

, when the irs finally contacted you. host: for the irs to do all of this, the build back better act that president biden has proposed has a lot of new money in it for the irs. would any of that money go toward resolving these problems we are talking about? guest: not a lot, that is what is disturbing to me. the irs has had major declines in enforcement personnel, auditors and collection employees. they need to be restored, but the taxpayer service employees have also declined significantly, and the volume of work on the taxpayer service side like we just talked has increased significantly. the number of phone calls to be made has increased, the number of pieces of mail to be processed has increased and staffing has decreased. there is not the same level of

attention in build back better to taxpayer service as there is to enforcement. part of the reason is the way that taxpayer service is scored in the budget, sequenced, when you bring on enforcement personnel, the irs can say that enforcement personnel can bring in four dollars to $10 depending on what employee you are looking at, what type of employee. if you expend money on enforcement -- enforcement personnel, theoretically you are bringing in revenue. it is hard to track that for taxpayer service but as we have seen, if you eliminate taxpayer service, then the taxpayers who are trying to comply with the law, the ones voluntarily trying are basically screwed and they aren't able to get the assistance they need to comply with the law and noncompliance increases on that end. we really need to get the

appropriation for taxpayer service increased significantly. host: a chart we will show on irs enforcement employees, according to a congressional budget office report. the can see it was some 50,004 hundred employees back in 2010. that number is down to 34,790, emphasizing what nina olson just said, with us this morning. we want to let her talk to you, our viewers and answer your taxpayer questions. (202)-748-8000 if you are in the eastern or central time zones. (202)-748-8001 if you are in the mountain or pacific time zones. we usually wait three months before booking guests again on this program to try and offer a variety of opinions, so having her today -- first up this

morning, john in florida. you were on with nina olson. caller: i have two questions or one is a comment. still waiting for the virus income tax return. use the cloud, make the irs a bank. everybody has an account and as you make more money, they take more money out using algorithms and at the end of the year, they ou or -- they owe you or you have to file for them, a money order or whatever. the second thing is a couple years ago i made a mistake on my income tax return and i said what do i do and i couldn't go back will stop i had to file a 1040x, which was ridiculous. why couldn't i go back and cancel that tax return and say i made a mistake?

i had to pay interest. they owed me money and didn't pay any interest on the money. host: thank you. guest: you raised a bunch of issues. the first one is why do we even have to file instead of simplifying it and in fact, many countries and most developed countries around the world have some form of pre-populating returns with information, income information that they have on hand. other countries have a system called pay as you earn, it is kind of like our withholding system but the rates are set so that based on your income each week or whatever your employer is paying you, you have the exact amount of tax that needs to be taken out, so at the end of the year, many people don't have to file a tax return if all of their income is just simply wage income. maybe they have a little interest or dividends, but i might be below a taxable

threshold so there is no filing whatsoever. other countries basically say to you, here is a return, here is the information we have from employers and banks and stocks and bonds, and if this is correct, here is what we think your taxes are. push this button to file. in our system, we are more complicated. many of those systems that do that, they tax individuals as individuals. they don't take into consideration family structure. in the united states, we include children, married filing jointly. the government does not know how any children you have. they don't know if that child lived with you for more than half the year. you have to tell them that. it is not as easy as other countries to just create a return and say here is what you owe.

as i have advocated since 2002, the government uses the information it has and make it available to taxpayers so they can download it into a government provided 1040, your preparer's 1040, it doesn't matter. but download it and if you have a simple return, you should be able to push a button and it's done and on its way. that eliminates keystroke problems, people switching numbers and things like that which causes chokepoints down the line. you mentioned the 1040x. this goes to the way the irs processes information and it has to wait until -- if you file a 1040 or electronic return, then you cannot file a second one. so you couldn't go in before the end of filing season and say wait, i want to pull back that

return and submit a new one. you have to do it on paper. that is -- the irs is saying we cannot process the paper we have. why are you setting up systems that force people to use paper? the irs greeted the 1040x finally, this past year that you could e-file but every 1040x has to be looked at by a human being. they don't have systems in place to use artificial intelligence to scan the 1040x and see if there is anything outrageous, and otherwise send it happily on its way. you see the struggles that the irs has with its technology. some of the technology is dated back to the 1960's. it is constantly having to struggle to keep up. host: you mentioned your work and advocacy over the years.

this might be a good time to explain what the national taxpayer advocate job does. guest: they have the national taxpayer advocate service, appointed by the treasury -- the secretary of treasury and their mission is to help taxpayers solve their problems with the irs and make administrative and legislative mentation's to mitigate those problems. for the past year or so, the taxpayer advocacy service has refused to take cases related to processing returns. all of these things we were just talking about, these returns that have been held up over the past year and a half, the taxpayer advocate service is not accepting them because they have been so swamped by other cases, but also because they say there is no way the irs -- because the irs can't fix that. i personally disagree with that, but i think that there is a lot of reason for taking those cases and then issuing taxpayer

systems orders if only to quantify the size and damage and harm that is happening to taxpayers in the united states, because the irs systems are not working and are overloaded. host: the current national taxpayer advocate after you held the job for how many years? guest: 18 years. host: michelle is up next, out of l.a. caller: we received for our 2019 taxes, an increase based on stock options that we received and they are saying we need to pay for them even though we added them to ordinary income. we sent in the information and they returned it saying we still need to pay the amount for the stock options even though we did already pay that tax. i am at a loss as to the best way to illustrate to them that we already added it to ordinary

income. guest: here is the issue with that. we were talking earlier about the levels of correspondence that the irs is getting, that it hasn't processed and i think -- it is not clear exactly whether your notice was a math error notice or what was the result of a correspondence exam, but you sent in the information. that information may very well be sitting someplace and it has not yet been controlled, meaning it has not been assigned or associated with your case, namely your liability, and so from the irs systems point of view, they don't know that you have provided that information to show that it is already paid, and therefore they are saying you still owe that and they are sending you collection notices. what i would suggest you do, and i hesitate -- one is take

something like a book to read and try to sit on the phone to get through to the irs. it is overloaded and swamped. you may get a courtesy disconnect if you sit too long. but try to reach out to the irs with your information, and see if they can locate it. maybe it has been associated. the other thing to do if there was a phone number on the notice and it looks like a collection notice, call them and ask for a hold on collection, for 60 days. what you don't want is while you are trying to resolve this liability, you don't want the irs thinking that you are ignoring them and then move forward with a levy on your bank account, etc. the third thing i would suggest doing is try to call the local taxpayer advocate in your community. there is at least one office in each state. this is not a return processing

issue, this is a dispute with the liability and the fact of the irs is not giving you credit the fact that you actually paid the tax on the return. they are swamped but that is a way people get into task. they will gather your information and send it over to the irs again and they will send it to the unit that needs to make that decision. the fourth thing i would suggest you do is if none of this works is call your congressional office. they have constituent liaisons, and they will get involved to get the case opened and addressed. i wish i had better news, but you just have to keep trying to get through. the reason is the information you have sent has not gotten hooked up with your case. host: do they seriously call it

a courtesy disconnect? guest: yes. sometimes it is not even courteous. sometimes the system disconnects and you don't even get a message. sometimes you get a "hello, we are disconnecting, goodbye." and that is the dis-ash that is the courtesy message. like if you call the airline, they say the wait time is 30 minutes and if you want you can keep your place in line and hang up and we will call you back at the number on which you called us. the problem -- and the irs is expanding that to 30 lines this year. the problem is that the only -- they can only schedule a call back if they have enough employees available to answer the calls coming in and are eligible for call back so if you have so many calls coming in and they are already handling calls,

it may be the call back feature will not be triggered because you don't want to say we will call you back in 20 minutes and there is nobody there to make that phone call. this is all down to a math equation. you have x number of calls and the irs has had over 200 million this past year, which it has never had before. you have a fewer number of employees with exponentially more calls, it is just a math equation. you have to get more bodies to meet the needs of taxpayers. host: i've never heard courtesy disconnect before. deborah is next out of maryland. caller: good morning. i have an issue about what we should do about one of these refunds. we filed our 2020 return in april 2021 and we are owed about $60,000, the state of maryland processed our return, no problem and we got that refund.

i have done everything. i have sat on hold, we contacted or tried to contact the taxpayer advocate and they have a message on their website that says don't bother trying to contact us. we have contacted our congressman and senator. they tried to get involved and they said they can't get any answers out of the irs. going thing left to do at this point, i assume is to file suit in federal district court but it is a refund situation so what else can we do? i am asking because i used to be a tax lawyer and it has been totally frustrating trying to do this. we tried to file electronically and they would not take the electronic filing for some reason, so we had to file by paper. i would have preferred to do the electronic. host: hang on the line. nina olson? guest: the irs on its website

announced that it has processed all individual returns that were filed before april and did not have any problems. you said you filed in april, so they just may beginning around to your paper filed return. according to the national taxpayer advocate, as of december 18, 2021, there were still 6.2 million unprocessed 1040s. most of them were paper. yours might be in there. even though the i.s. knows they received your return, they don't know anything about it, and it's not on the systems for anybody on the phone, to be able to see where it is and what state along the way it is in.

because you filed in april, the law says, and you requested a refund, that is a refund claim that you made on a return and if the irs has not processed your return by six months after you file with the refund claim, you can go to federal district court. i know that incurs expense, but that may be something -- for that amount of money, you may want to consider that, filing a refund claim in federal district court. that will get a u.s. attorney assigned to that case and they will find out where that return is and what that refund is due. the other thing you can do is you can wait a little longer, to see whether they finally get to your return and the last thing i would do is try to use the fax

number to the baltimore, maryland taxpayer advocate service. don't call the main number, call the baltimore number or fax to the baltimore number and explain your situation and the amount of the refund and begged them to take the case. and say you will file in federal district court and that will cause you additional economic harm. this is exactly the kind of situation that people are facing because the irs cannot process these things timely and efficiently. we are sympathetic because everybody suffered through the pandemic but at some point, you have 150 million taxpayers and you have to put the interest of the 150 million taxpayers first if you want to maintain compliance with the tax system. host: working on finding that

number so i can give it to the caller. next up, bill in new jersey. caller: good morning. i tuned in late but i'm watching and listening to the callers. it brings credence to what i'm about to say. i don't know why we still have the tax system we have. i think we should do away with income tax and institute a national sales tax. the people watching are always saying they want the rest to pay their fair share. if you institute a national sales tax, the rich people would pay the most money because they spend the most money. if you want to help the poor people, you say there is no sales tax on your merchandise. so if you buy a used car, you don't pay sales tax but if rich people buy a new one, they will. it might stimulate some business in the country by people

refurbishing washers and dryers and other types of things that people would buy used to save. they're talking about hiring another 87,000 irs agents. where is the money going to come from to pay for that? then you have to give them retirement and hire new people. we just keep building the government bigger and bigger and it doesn't make any sense. host: before we get too far away from deborah, the number for the baltimore local taxpayer advocate office, the fax number 855-821-0238. hopefully deborah is still watching. nina olson, any comments on that last call? guest: most developed countries actually do what the caller was

saying. the national sales tax or what they would call the goods and services tax because they also tax services. or a value added tax which is a form of sales tax that gets added in each stage of production. that is the major source of federal revenue for most countries and that the individual income tax and the corporate income tax are much smaller parts of that pie where is in the united states you have individual income tax really being a major part of the federal revenue with corporate income tax behind it and then payroll taxes which are taxes on >> you can see the rest of this segment on the mobile app or c-span.org. we take you to a discussion with the united states ambassador to