Christopher Stark, President & CEO, Cetrom appeared as a featured author in CPA Practice Advisor on March 2, 2022. The full article can be read here.
The 2022 tax season, stretching from January 24 until April 18, 2022, was a busy one for CPA firms. Around 46,000 CPA firms worked around the clock to file their clients’ tax returns on time. This period presents a lot of stress and challenges for CPA firms as well as opportunities to improve their overall operations and productivity for the next year.
The Ugly
For the 2022 tax season, taxpayers should be expecting delays in processing their tax returns. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) continues to have operational problems due to the pandemic, budget cuts, distributing federal economic relief payments, heightened workload, and dealing with a 2021 backlog of tax filings (and even older!). More than 6 million individual tax returns and 2.3 million amended tax returns filed dating back to 2019 were yet to be processed. Many taxpayers can opt for an extension that enables them to file until October 15, 2022, which may help with the IRS backlog.
The IRS backlog is a definite headache for many CPA firms. They have expressed much frustration with the chaos at the IRS and have expressed that they felt powerless to help clients. While they can file tax returns electronically, they need to ensure the tax returns are accurate to help speed up refunds. The IRS is increasing their enforcement efforts, so businesses need to have better recordkeeping compliance. With a number of CPA firms having a remote workforce, using a secure cloud-based platform is key to ensuring their clients’ tax information is safe and accurate so their tax returns are not held up or audited by the IRS.
Read the full article placement in CPA Practice Advisor.