Source: United States Senator for New Jersey Bob Menendez
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), a senior member of the Senate Finance Committee that oversees the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), today pressed IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig about what progress the agency has made to address numerous problems affecting American taxpayers all across the country, improve its poor customer service, and clear the massive processing backlogs of more than 15 million unprocessed returns from previous tax filing seasons.
During his questioning of Commissioner Rettig, Sen. Menendez pointed out that two of the primary issues contributing to the backlog at the IRS was issues with hiring workers to answer the phones and the lack of technology that would allow workers to process returns faster.
“The IRS is stuck in the 1960s before the Information Age,” said Sen. Menendez when questioning IRS Commissioner Rettig during the Finance Committee hearing “Last year, IRS employees were expected to open more than 21 million paper returns that were filed. They were expected to manually process the returns…This all takes time and is a reason why the IRS is a year behind on working down the backlog.”
[WATCH FULL QUESTIONING HERE]
Sen. Menendez also pressed Commissioner Rettig about the agency’s continued use of ID.me – facial recognition software that stores an individual’s data and biometrics.
“I am also extremely concerned about the amount of information ID.me collects and stores for every taxpayer that uses its website—as a matter of fact as ID.me tells me according to this California disclosure in its notice for residents includes things like, age, gender, military/veteran status, and the taxpayers’ location…where they access the ID.me website,” added Sen. Menendez. “Even though tax returns and tax identity information—including a taxpayers’ name, address, and taxpayer identification number—are protected from disclosure or potential disclosure by Internal Revenue Code section 6103, the information disclosed to ID.me is not protected.”
Sen. Menendez has long been sounding the alarm about the IRS’s customer service performance and the agency’s massive processing backlogs. Last month, Sen. Menendez led more than 100 Senate and House colleagues in a bicameral, bipartisan effort to press Commissioner Rettig for the IRS’s lack of a comprehensive plan to remedy the numerous problems affecting taxpayers as this filing season is already well underway. In February, Sen. Menendez and Rep. Spanberger led a bicameral effort with 45 colleagues urging the IRS to take immediate actions to reduce its massive backlog and improve its customer service during the 2022 tax filing season. Shortly after sending out the letter, the IRS announced it would be putting together a second surge team to help address the massive backlogs and continue to improve customer service.
The Senator also led a push for greater transparency on the IRS’s continued engagement with ID.me, an online identity network that taxpayers can use to access government services, given the disproportionate harm such facial recognition technology can have on minority and low-income communities. After weeks of waiting, the IRS finally provided a response to this letter just days before today’s hearing focused solely on the handling and protection of biometric information. However, the IRS has failed to address concerns about how other information, including demographic information (i.e., race, gender, age, or military/veteran status), collected by ID.me is ultimately protected when taxpayers interact with this system.
In late January, Sens. Menendez and Cassidy, along several members of the House, led more than 200 colleagues in a bipartisan and bicameral letter calling on the IRS to provide penalty relief for taxpayers – spurring the agency to temporarily halt some, but not all of the penalty notifications. Sens. Menendez and Cassidy also used IRS Commissioner Rettig last year to keep phone lines open while addressing the unprecedented backlog of unprocessed returns and to take concrete steps that will allow them to perform basic functions well such as answering phones, providing quality online and in-person services, and processing returns in a timely manner.
###