The federal watchdog for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) faulted the federal agency for not giving guidance on how to handle state stimulus payments, which led to the IRS issuing an alert to taxpayers to delay filing a week ago.
Since issuing its alert on Feb. 3, the IRS has not yet provided “additional clarification” on how it will handle state rebate and refund payment programs as of Friday, Feb. 10.
“The impact of the delay in providing timely information and guidance is hard to overstate,” the Taxpayer Advocate Service (TAS), a federal agency within the IRS, said Thursday in a post. “Giving taxpayers a choice between waiting to file their returns and receive their refunds or filing returns now that the IRS may later determine to be inaccurate is not acceptable.”…