Over the past year, the IRS has been slow to process tax returns but has appeared to continue to issue notices – especially math error notices. While the IRS made 628,997 math error corrections last year through July 15, 2020, the IRS made about 9 million math error corrections on returns filed by taxpayers in the same period in 2021—a more than 1400% increase.
Most of those notices—about 7.4 million—were related to the refund recovery credit, or RRC. The RRC is claimed on Form 1040 to reconcile stimulus payments received in 2020. Most likely, taxpayers made errors when calculating the amounts of the checks due or actually received.
But the remaining notices—still at a pace of two-and-a-half times more than in the prior year—were issued by the IRS for other reasons.
To find out more, including how math errors work, check out IRS to Taxpayers Receiving Notices: What, Like Math Is Hard?
(And kudos if you got the “Legally Blonde” reference.)
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