The Internal Revenue Service said that taxpayers who filed their federal income taxes early in this year’s filing season and reported certain state 2022 tax refunds as taxable income should consider filing an amended return.

On Feb. 10, 2023, the IRS provided details clarifying the federal tax status involving special payments made to taxpayers by 21 states in 2022. During a review, the IRS determined that in the interest of sound tax administration and other factors, taxpayers in many states did not need to report these payments on their 2022 tax returns. Consequently, the IRS will not challenge the taxability of state payments related to general welfare and disaster relief.

This means people in the following states don’t need to report these state payments on their 2022 tax return: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Maine, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. Alaska is in this group as well, but the determination applies only to the special supplemental Energy Relief Payment received.

Taxpayers can see a listing of individual states and the federal tax treatment of their special state refunds or rebates listed on this online chart.
In addition, many people in Georgia, Massachusetts, South Carolina, and Virginia will not include special state 2022 tax refunds as income for federal tax purposes if they meet certain requirements. For these individuals, state payments will not be included for federal tax purposes if the payment is a refund of state taxes paid and the recipient either claimed the standard deduction for tax year 2022 or itemized their tax year 2022 deductions but did not receive a tax benefit.
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The Internal Revenue Service announced changes to the Bridge phase of the Compliance Assurance Process (CAP) program. CAP is a cooperative pre-filing program for large corporate taxpayers.

The CAP program began in 2005 as a way to resolve tax issues through open, cooperative and transparent interactions between the IRS and taxpayers before the filing of a return.

The IRS made significant changes to the program in 2019 to improve its operation and to ensure the best use of limited government resources. One outcome of this change was the development of the Bridge phase in CAP, which is reserved for taxpayers whose risk of noncompliance does not support the continued use of IRS compliance resources.

During the Bridge phase, the IRS will not accept any disclosures, conduct any reviews or provide any assurances. In the three years since its inception, the IRS has received consistent feedback from taxpayers that participation in the Bridge phase deprives them of the most important aspect of CAP – the review by the IRS.

Due to this feedback, the IRS has developed a new pilot phase called “Bridge Plus.” Taxpayers will be required to provide book-to-tax reconciliations, credit utilization and other supporting documentation shortly after their audited financial statement is finalized. An IRS team will risk-assess the documents to determine if the taxpayer is suitable for the Bridge Plus phase.
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In October, the IRS delivered a fourth monthly round of approximately 36 million Child Tax Credit payments totaling $15 billion. As part of the continuing process of building out the advance CTC program, which has included outreach to bring in previous non-filers and the launch of the CTC Update Portal that has allowed millions of taxpayers to choose options for their payments, the IRS has also identified certain payees who appear to have mistakenly received advance CTC payments. These payments were made in July, August, and September for children who are too old to qualify for payments or, in some cases, for children who were claimed on multiple tax returns. Fewer than 1% of advance monthly payments fall into these categories. Starting with the October payments, the individuals who received those payments (approximately 220, 000 people) will stop receiving payments.

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MEMORANDUM FOR: COMMISSIONER OF INTERNAL REVENUE

FROM: Michael E. McKenney
Deputy Inspector General for Audit

SUBJECT: Final Audit Report – People First Initiative Actions Helped Taxpayers During the Pandemic; However, Many Taxpayers Received Inaccurate Collection Notices (Audit # 202030628)

This report presents the results of our review to evaluate actions taken by the Small Business/ Self-Employed Division to assist taxpayers in response to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. This review is part of our Fiscal Year 2021 Annual Audit Plan and addresses the major management and performance challenge of Responding to the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Management’s complete response to the draft report is included as Appendix III. Copies of this report are also being sent to the Internal Revenue Service managers affected by the report recommendation.

Report Number: 2021-36-060

IRS wraps up its 2021 “Dirty Dozen” scams list with warning about promoted abusive arrangements.

The Internal Revenue Service concludes the “Dirty Dozen” list of tax scams with a warning to taxpayers to watch out for schemes peddled by tax promoters, including syndicated conservation easements, abusive micro-captive insurance arrangements and other abusive arrangements.

The IRS warns people to be on the lookout for promoters who peddle false hopes of large tax deductions from abusive arrangements. These “deals” are generally marketed by unscrupulous promoters who make false claims about their legitimacy and charge high fees to boot. These promoters frequently devise new ways to cheat the system and market them aggressively. Some taxpayers play the audit lottery hoping they don’t get noticed.

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Today, the Internal Revenue Service, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, and the Bureau of the Fiscal Service announced they are disbursing more than 25 million payments in the fourth batch of Economic Impact Payments from the American Rescue Plan.

Today’s announcement brings the total disbursed so far to more than 156 million payments, with a total value of approximately $372 billion, since these payments began rolling out to Americans in batches, as announced on March 12.

The fourth batch of payments began processing on Friday, April 2, with an official payment date of April 7, with some people receiving direct payments in their accounts earlier as provisional or pending deposits. Here is additional information on this batch of payments:

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