The Internal Revenue Service is bringing in 3,500 telephone operators to deal with the flood of calls about economic impact payments from taxpayers waiting for their money from the IRS.
The $2 trillion CARES Act that Congress passed in March included provisions to give individual taxpayers $1,200 each, $2,400 for couples, plus an extra $500 for each of their dependent children to help them get through the economic fallout from the novel coronavirus pandemic. While 140 million of the 150 million payments have been sent oiut, according to figures from the IRS on Monday, numerous problems quickly emerged.
Jocelyn Sivalingam, M.D., F.A.C.P., is a medical director with West’s Health Advocate Solutions, a company that provides health and well-being solutions for more than 12,500 organizations using clinical guidelines to inform preventive screening recommendations as well as ongoing disease management. Dr. Sivalingam is board-certified in Infectious Diseases and leads the clinical guidelines working group at Health Advocate. She also serves as a key leader of clinical operations for the chronic care solutions program and provides clinical expertise across a number of areas at Health Advocate.
Michael Anderson is a 25-year veteran of the Property and Casualty (P&C) insurance industry. As Business Owner of Guidewire Predictive Analytics, he is focused on delivering advanced analytics solutions that enable Smart Core systems to the P&C Industry. Prior to joining Guidewire Software, Michael led Audatex U.S. Data Science and Analytics teams and served as Director, Travelers Insurance where he co-managed countrywide Auto Physical Damage Claim Operations.
Stephanie serves Security & Risk Professionals. She leads a team of analysts who provide research and advisory services on topics like IT security frameworks; governance, risk, and compliance (GRC); identity and access management (IAM); application security; data… (Read Full Bio)security; and IT infrastructure security. She also provides Forrester's coverage of specific risk topics including business continuity, IT continuity/disaster recovery, and backup and recovery.Previous Work ExperienceStephanie has more than 12 years of experience in BC/DR, backup and recovery, and information storage industries. Prior to joining the Security & Risk team, Stephanie was a principal analyst on Forrester's Infrastructure & Operations team, where she was instrumental in the development of Forrester's research and offerings in continuity, availability, and information storage and protection.Prior to joining Forrester, Stephanie was a senior analyst with Yankee Group, where she provided insight on technology trends to key system, storage, and information protection vendors and consultative advice on strategic and tactical initiatives. Before Yankee Group, Stephanie worked at EMC, first as a technical architect and then as a senior education and productivity consultant. As a technical architect, she articulated EMC's value to partners and customers and designed solutions to meet customer and new market opportunities. As an education and productivity consultant, she managed and supported complex technical training programs for business and practice managers in EMC's Technology Solutions Group. Prior to EMC, Stephanie worked at Accenture as a consultant, focusing on the implementation of business applications (SAP, PeopleSoft) for global businesses.EducationStephanie holds a bachelor's degree in business administration and finance and investments from Babson College.
The IRS relied on direct deposit information from taxpayers’ 2018 and 2019 tax returns, when it was available. But many bank accounts were temporary ones set up by tax prep chains for doing refund transfers, and there was no record of the taxpayer’s own bank account. Taxpayers were asked to enter their own direct deposit information online in such cases, and many are still awaiting their checks. The paper checks only recently started being sent out, and in some cases the IRS didn’t have the most up-to-date addresses for taxpayers. In some cases, payments were mistakenly sent to deceased taxpayers and people living abroad.
Much of the IRS workforce has been working remotely as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, although some have been called back to work to deal with the voluminous unopened paper correspondence that has piled up in trailers outside the IRS offices. Now it is starting to bring back employees to answer the phones and answer questions from anxious taxpayers about the status of their payments, although presumably these employees could work remotely.
The IRS warned Monday that telephone assistance and other services will nevertheless remain limited. The agency expects to bring back additional telephone helpers as state and local advisories allow.
In any case, answers for most of the common questions related to the economic impact payments can be found online on IRS.gov. The IRS regularly posts new and updated responses to the most frequently asked questions about economic impact payments here and in the FAQ page for its Get My Payment tool. Taxpayers who want to know about the status of their economic impact payment can check the Get My Payment page regularly. The information is updated as the IRS continues to process the rest of the payments for delivery.
Answers for most questions about the stimulus payments are also available on the automated message for people who call the phone number provided in the letter they receive about their economic impact payments, known as Notice 1444, a letter signed by President Trump informing them their payment has arrived (whether it has or not). Those who need more assistance at the end of the message will have the option of talking to a live representative.
