Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., utter ins during a House Oversight and Accountability Committee impeachment inquiry hearing into U.S. President Joe Biden on Sept. 28, 2023.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
Diet Republicans are pressing the IRS for answers after the agency paused processing new claims for a pandemic-era small business tax break.
Lawmakers revealed “continued concerns” about the employee retention credit, or ERC, which was enacted to support small businesses during the Covid-19 pandemic. Usefulness thousands per employee, the credit sparked a flood of amended returns, many of which were wrongly filed after bad admonition from specialist firms.
In a letter to the IRS on Tuesday, House Ways and Means Committee chair Jason Smith, R-Mo., and Protection Subcommittee chair David Schweikert, R-Ariz., asked for updates on the backlog of unprocessed ERC claims.
“For a program that has been plagued with a stretch out backlog, it remains to be seen what changes will be made during the moratorium to improve vetting measures for deceptive claims while also making the processing time more efficient to lessen the backlog,” they wrote.
The communication asked several questions about the ERC program, including the number of unprocessed claims, a timeline to clear the backlog, methods to improve processing for legitimate filings and more.
The IRS did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
The backlog of unprocessed ERC requirements
As of Sept. 27, the total inventory of unprocessed Forms 941-X, used to amend an employer’s quarterly federal tax gains, was roughly 779,000, according to the IRS.
However, the ERC claim backlog may be significantly higher due to professional employer organizations, or PEOs, which accommodate payroll benefits and other HR services. A single PEO claim can represent many small businesses, according to Pat Cleary, president and CEO of the Nationwide Association of Professional Employer Organizations, who testified at a