VANNOY:

Hello everyone, and welcome to today’s webinar, the I r s backlog and the impacts on small business. So this is a, this is a growing big topic, and I, I, you know, a common theme as we talk in this weekly webinar series about payroll and HR issues human capital management issues impacting small businesses. I think as much as we watch the news, we feel hopeful about vaccine and and the economy slowly starting to reopen whether you think we’re doing it too slow, too fast it’s pr I think there’s general consensus. We, you know, we’re on the right path. And there is a, a, a vision to normalcy that’s returning. I think what’s gonna catch a lot of people flat footed is, I’d say kind of the echo of, of covid, right? So all these businesses that were shut down what happens after the, after the, the economy is recovering, but now these businesses are recovering from the, from the backlog.

What happens to states that have underfunded state unemployment balances because of this? And what’s the, what is probably gonna be a multi-year impact of that? And certainly one of ’em that I think so many people are feeling today is this IRS backlog. So just as businesses shut down I think it’s safe to say the, the federal government erred on the side of safety in their offices shut down in their ability to just do simple things like process tax returns was hugely impacted, and there’s a cascading effect from that. So w with that, I wanna welcome my guest today, Terri Kirby, who joins us from our, our, our Santa Ana, California office. Terri is our tax and compliance manager in, I’d say very, very expert in, in, in, in, in knowledgeable in this field.

So, Terri, welcome and thanks for joining me today. Thank you. All right. So just before we jump in, I got, there’s four things that I want to kind of unpack around, around this area. Number one is just the, the landscape. Like how did we get here? Number two is the, the, the sequencing of, of notices cuz notices are going. But it’s kind of this out of sync nature of notices that were in print queues, even when there weren’t human beings in the offices. In, in in the latest is the greatest so to speak of, of the, of these notices that are coming out. Number three is how we should be thinking about getting notices that have already been resolved, cuz that’s outta sync. And then number four, just general guidance. How should clients be thinking in, in, in, in, or non-insured clients, small businesses be thinking about this IRS backlog.

Ju just, I want to point out first, Terri represents on on a, a consortium. It’s the N P R C, the National Payroll Reporting Consortium. And this is where Asure sits with a bunch of you know, kind of household names in the payroll business. So the, the, the biggest companies there are out there that you know, we’re, we have a seat at the table. Terri represents us as a seat at the table. So we do feel like we can, we’re speaking today from a, from a position of authority in, in a bit of an insider’s view. The N P R C really is the, the kind of the go-to organization that advises and consults private organization that advises consults the I r s you know, the revenue department small business administration all these government functions as they, you know, last year passed F F C R A and cares and now new stimulus to help these help these new, these legislators kind of figure out, okay, the big law was passed. Now what’s the best way to practically implement these, knowing how systems really work in the real world. So just want, wanna throw that out there that Terri represents us on the N prc. So brings a really unique perspective here. So Terri, let’s go ahead and jump into it in, I guess just the, the big one. You know, some of this might sound obvious, but how big is this IRS backlog? And then maybe a little history. How, how the heck did we get here?

KIRBY:

Well, it is large for paper filings, which doesn’t always seem to be the, the case because a lot of a lot of the employment returns should be filed electronically. But understand that COVID hit in March and that was the end of the first quarter. Basically at that point in time, i r s went to very small staff in April while we had first quarter and our 10 40 world, which is their largest processing period they basically had staff go home. They reduced work so that then when they did start coming back to work, they tried to make it so that their agents and individuals were working from home, just like a lot of the businesses that we have today. And doing that, the issue was the backlog of the paper mail that was coming in. A lot of returns don’t come in electronically.

Additionally, amendments don’t get filed electronically for employment taxes. So the papers coming in, but they didn’t have anybody to process it. They then started bringing in individuals two, three times a week to process the backlogs. But the backlogs were so huge that they weren’t able to get through them quite quickly. And in that case, they’re just unpacking mail and then trying to scan it. They then need to basically put it into the location so it can be processed. They started bringing more individuals back, I wanna say around the August timeframe. And they started putting more concerted effort into working this huge backlog that included your amended returns, paper filings, some of the late 10 40 returns. And some of ’em were extended because they had, because of covid, the extended filing deadlines for personal income tax went to July. And then the extension for those that had requested it through October.

So the paper backlog grew just as a person in tax. I know that we were kind of tracking some amendments that we had forwarded for employment tax, which again, like I said, they have to be paper. It took ’em over six months just to record them to say that they were in progress. And we commented a bit on that last year, but it’s still happening. They started to pull back and have more individuals in the office like everybody else started to do in the late summertime. And that’s when we had the changes for how to apply for amended returns for the F F C R A in September. They released the New Amendment form for second quarter, cuz you couldn’t amend before then and how to adjust because they had the issues with notices and the system understanding how F F C R A worked. Then they released the instructions and were already into October and filing third quarter. So there was a big, it’s just kind of a snowball impact that happened to get ’em where we’re at.

VANNOY:

Gary, Gary, maybe a couple follow up questions there. So, number one do, do you have a sense, I mean the number of, I know there are tons of amended returns. I mean, with F F C R A, you know, it, it was complex, right? And so the way people would would, would get reimbursed, companies would get reimbursed for employees who had to go on leave for, for what I’d say qualifying leave for, for F F C R A leave. You know, they didn’t know, they didn’t know at first. They find out later, oh my gosh, I couldn’t get that money back, so I’m gonna file an amended return. Do, do we have a sense for like, did amended returns have a 10% increase? Did they double, did they quadruple? I I gotta imagine that that was a, a huge compounding problem.

KIRBY:

I’d like to say that they only doubled, but I think with all of the things that happened, even just in our area for F F C R A and how we got into it when guidance was provided after the fact kind of thing, I mean, we were getting better guidance in the end of April, beginning of May, but I’ve already filed by first quarter and then how do I handle it? How does it go through? We had more guidance coming out in June and we’re already getting ready to file returns, so it’s kind of late to go back. I think they grew a number of the amendments processes and I know that with their development or their systems, because again, their developers were probably offer covid as well. Getting those systems developed for allowing for F F C R A for sick leave, family leave earned employee retention credits cuz it started back then also they were carrying over part of that from the last two weeks of March.

Cuz legislation went in on March 27th. So there was a big scramble. I mean, the guidance from Chief counsel wasn’t able to be able to get as much in as quickly as possible because of the covid delay as well. So I think all of that kind of set everything back. And so there was a, I think there was a lot of awakening when more guidance was available, but at that point in time, we had already gotten into the first, you know, first period of filing what F F C R A did a number of employers at that same PO point in time. We had the P P P loans that were out there and available and how was that gonna apply? And that was changing the dynamics of the landscape. Can I have F F C R A, can I have employee retention credits?

Can I ha how long does it last eight weeks? Does it go for 24 weeks? Do I get an extension? So a lot of these impacts hit all the different parts of the agency. And when it does that, everything kind of slowed down. I think, especially because of the availability of having people to do the regular job. It was a challenge, you know, having people working remotely to be able to try to program systems to recognize, you know, social security delo deferrals for the employer that wouldn’t be paid until 2021 and 2022. So I would, I’d lean to say that the backlog grew a lot bigger, I think, than anybody anticipated. Yeah. and it was across all tax types for the agency, so that, that just hit ’em hard.

VANNOY:

Yeah. Terri, how much, how much do you think, so I, I, I’m guessing my next question kind of goes beyond the purview of the N P R C, but what’s your sense just be, having been in this space for a long time, what, what’s your, what’s your sense for these? The, the paper filing process obviously got completely blown up, but the electronic filers, how about electronic filers? And so like, if you’re in a business, maybe you’re electronic filer, but if you’re a payroll company, you’re a a, an electronic batch filer, which is just a whole nother world. Do you, do, do, how, how much of the, this backlog is kind of commingled together with common resources versus these are different work streams?

KIRBY:

Well, I know that for electronic filing, that’s, I mean, that’s where everybody wants to be at. And as a bulk provider for a reporting agent for employment taxes, the returns we should be forwarding are electronics. So those have been getting processed and that’s great. The, the concern is, is that when we have employers that are just realizing how things are impacting them, or we’re filing electronic returns, the systems, there’s like 32 systems at the IRS that have different aspects to the different filings that go into the agency. But when electronic returns come in, usually right around two weeks after said returns have been loaded and posted after that period of time, they start firing off notices. And those are systemically programmed so that you’ll get a first notice and then like another two, three weeks, there’s a follow-up notice and then two or three weeks, then there’s your third notice, which could be your intent to levy.

And those systems and their calendars and schedules weren’t changed even though covid was, and there wasn’t bodies in the office. And so the notices were triggered by those electronic returns. So in addition to having paper coming in from the outside world with all of the updates and changes, you have processes at the I r s that are generating paper that needs to be shipped and mailed so that people can respond. And those were backing up. And once those started getting to the point where they were processing the mail and processing their outbound mail there was a flood and they couldn’t handle, I don’t think that volume as well. So there’s a dual process going on. And then as we released or we were receiving guidance on how to address, say, you know, amendments for second quarter in September, that’s when inbound outbound notices, we received that first wave where everybody was saying, getting notices. And then they were saying that it was because their system hadn’t been programmed to recognize like the employer deferred social security and some of the other processes they had to reprogram. They said, you know, kind of ignore these notices for now because we’re gonna get updated ones. But then the updated ones that came out were the second or third notice in the queue and not the first. So we have intent to levies.

VANNOY:

I, I wanna come back and go, go deeper on that one. Maybe one last thing. So for our listeners, when <laugh> Terri said there’s 32 unique systems I think that might be a shock. I don’t you, you’re gonna, you’re gonna get a bonus prize if you can rattle off the names functions of all 32. But <laugh>, what, what, so describe this. Can you put some color around this? Like w what on earth are the 32 systems that, that I think really are core to, and I don’t even say this is IRS’s fault, this is just kinda how, you know, they’re, they’re a gigantic business, right? They have lots of definitely systems to, to, to run the business <laugh>. So definitely. What, what, what’s the, what are the nature of some of these systems?

KIRBY:

Well some of ’em have to do with employment tax, which is, you know, our primary group. And you have to realize that there’s different checks and balances that go through the agency. So you’ve got the agency that has to do with wage and investments. You’ve got penalty and interest, and you’ve got personal income tax, you have com employer’s tax. So you’ve got your employer’s business tax, income tax, corporate tax garnishments for federal garnishments and wages, it, you know, 10 40 world. It’s all tax entities that are basically under the Department of Treasury. And so when you have all of these systems, then you’ve got, you know, agents, you’ve got field agents that need to work, some of them, you’ve got agents that work with the large businesses. You have the small business group. We have, you know, wa again, back to wage and investment, you have the personal income tax, you have the taxpayer interface me and my, you know, 10 40, I wanna go find out where my re refund is at.

Those are, those are all encompassing in everything that they have internal for their training and their support and their calls as well as external go into these 32 systems. And so they have a, a lot of things that they’re engaged in. And so they have to make ’em all run efficiently. It’s not just the you pay with your payroll and you, you turn in your annual report. It, it is very dynamic of all of the things that they are vested in. I mean, they’re handling a c a reporting and so then they have to report back to Congress on a lot of that. So there’s, there are a lot of things that touch on those 32 systems that they have that basically trigger off notices. And then those systems are also used, like I said, by agents and such, so that they can generate letters that you might receive as there’s some research being going on, or as they’re processing returns and information, they may have an agent that forwards out an information saying, hi, we need six more weeks to work your item because we haven’t been able to get as far as we want it on it, and stuff like that.

So they, they have a lot of communications.

VANNOY:

You know what, that was the best 15 explanation I think I’ve ever heard on, on, on why the backlog is what it isn’t so big. So that’s, that’s good. Good backdrop. So I’m, I’m gonna, I’m gonna shift to slightly more tactical, right? So there’s in, in, in it, it’s two things. It’s this latest is the greatest, as you described it when we were talking the other day of, of print notices, how like a print queue and these 32 systems are out of sync with the human capacity to, to deal with and address. And then the, the number three we’ll go to will be the the call it asynchronous issue of things are actually been resolved. But you’re getting notices. But let, let’s just tac tackle this one first. What, what do you mean when latest is greatest for, for the these prognosis notices?

KIRBY:

Well, from what we understand, the notice backlog that we kind of referred to and we ran into the first time, and that was last year, we had a, a conversation with regards to the notices that came out from the I R s and they were considered incorrect because they, the system wasn’t programmed in the notice side to recognize the differences in the credits and processes with the F F C R A and CARES Act. And that was around September, or actually August period, cuz I think the first set of notices started about in August. With that then the changes came on. They were generating information, people were generating amendments and coming in and we got another second wave of C O V I D where everything went back, everything kind of shut back down right after September. It was mid-October, November that, you know, we had our peak and then we had to all go back.

So the individuals that were coming into the office were now restricted again that caused them to have a backlog of those notices that needed to go out to take action. And so what occurred it, or what seemed to occur was that the, the systems are still generating notices. They’re cranking ’em out, but they couldn’t get them out fast enough. So for the most part, they released the latest notice, you know, instead of the first go around notice, it might have been the second or third, and they tried to put communications in there saying, hi, we know that the dates on this notice are already passed and they’re just now getting out to you. And they provided updates. But that was like on page six of a notice maybe so that the initial notice still had the originating dates and the respond to deadline dates. And those may have been dates that you have just received the notice or they were in the past. And so the agency tried to put in that last bit of communication, but it didn’t make it on the first page. And so, of course as anybody would, when you open your first notice from the irs, you pay attention to the bold words on the front page. And sometimes we don’t get to page six where it says, we know that the dates are wrong, but please respond. And you have a extended deadline.

VANNOY:

By then you’ve already completely freaked out <laugh>

KIRBY:

And you’re definitely calling

VANNOY:

Your, calling your spouse saying, oh my God, what are we gonna do? Right? I mean,

KIRBY:

That’s it. Yeah. And so, and that, and that was, that was really in information that we got that was kind of interesting cuz it was that they were able to edit the communication, but the edit on the communication was like on the latter pages of the notice, which normally you get to the first two or three pages, that’s as far as you go. You don’t go to the last pages to find the other information. So

VANNOY:

That’s a

KIRBY:

Lot of stress. <Laugh>.

VANNOY:

Yeah. Lemme ask, lemme ask this. So the fact that, so there’s a sequencing problem, like if, you know, you, it went straight to, to notice number three, which is the mean letter versus, and you miss number one and two, that might be like helpful to understand, but does that actually change the consequence that you still are in stage three and, and you in the, the, the situation is in fact that dire

KIRBY:

And for research purposes, I’d say you’re kind of correct, but the i r s, they, if their system has triggered off that last notice, that’s what we need to respond to because their agents are responding to that last notice as well. So unfortunately we jump straight to intent to levy. That means that we’re making phone calls directly to the agency to put clients’ accounts on hold so that they can’t take that enforce of action because we still need to figure out what’s going on. That has peaked a lot of processes. And again, that, that also cause goes to lead into that frustration for our customers because the agents are just going based on what the system says and the system says it sent out an intent to levy. You know, even though it may have had those extended verbiage on that six page, it’s still at that level three.

And so a lot of calls are going in, we’re making those calls and in most cases you get 30 days. But we still have our amended return sitting out there in the backlog from September, October for second quarter. Second quarter had intent to levies in August. So that’s kind of where we get into this growing frenzy maybe of we’ve got notices it’s an intent to levy, I need to put a hold on the account. The fix is still sitting in a box or it may be getting processed, but it hasn’t been recorded and worked at the I r s and oh, another month has popped up, so now I need to call in and do another hold because they may start taking more enforce action. Okay,

VANNOY:

Karen, before we go to the, the, the sequencing of, of solution re resolution versus notice, I, I, I’m, I I’m assuming this is a totally case by case basis but I, but I want, I I want you to share your thoughts on okay for what, whatever the reasons are, and I think you did a good job explaining it. I’m a small business owner. I’m, I, I didn’t get notice one, two, or three. All of a sudden I get notice number four that says, boy, this is straight to intent to levy. This is an extremely serious situation. And the explaining how it happened doesn’t change the fact that it, this is now where I’m at. How, how responsive and cooperative should employers and entrepreneurs expect the irs to be when, when, when, if they were to contact them or if they’re an insured customer, when we contact them,

KIRBY:

The IRS agents that are answering on the phones are very responsive to a degree. Again, they are kind of bound by what they’re able to do for us as opposed to, you know, being able to just resolve everything for us, in most cases because of C O V I D and the way things lay out, you may get an individual that’s experiences in personal income tax and not employment tax. But they can put a hold on the account in most cases, if you require an amended return, the only way to process an amended return for employment tax today is by a paper. So they’re feeding that monster that’s over in the corner and they’re not able to, you know, send me your your amendment and I’ll fix it. They, they aren’t able to do that. So we need to be able to respond, we need to be able to go to the I r s, we need to be able to tell them, you know, please put a hold on the account.

In many cases, the agents will bend over backwards to try to assist the employer and they have been doing as much as they possibly can to assist us that they have the tools to do so. Again, most of the calls, if you call in and you wait on hold for any length of time, which wait times are long in most cases they’ll try to refer if it is a balance issue or if you have a balance due, they’re gonna encourage you to go electronically and make the payment and, you know, don’t stop pa go keep going. Because that helps initiate some of the other changes that happen in the system. Cuz when deposits are made, it triggers a reevaluation in some cases. But again, yeah, the agents can only assist as far as they have the access to be able to do so. And in most cases, we’re still dependent upon those agents that can open the mail and they can actually physically process the information that’s in that documentation on the employer account.

VANNOY:

So Terri, I I, I don’t intend this to be like just some completely shameless plug for sure, but I know there’s a reality of, you know, just I’m a small business owner. I’m, I’m working my face off night and day to keep my doors open and, and and, and come through this pandemic. I just simply can’t sit on hold all day. And then when I do do actually talk to a live body, I don’t speak tax, right? I, I speak the language of my industry, right? Like I’m an, I’m an expert.

KIRBY:

That’s it

VANNOY:

At, at home remodeling, and I can, I can, I, I can school you on, on on, on plumbing thing in in construction vocabulary, but I, I’m way over my head instantaneously when talking to a field agent from the irs. Describe the value of, of, you know, working with someone like Ashore or one of our competitors who, who is, who’s doing this on your behalf to be, because I, I have to assume just vocabulary alone and just speaking tax has a gigantic impact on the agent’s ability to understand your issue and work with you.

KIRBY:

And you’re right, it is, it, it’s just like any business. You’re in your entity, your group, your vocabulary, your, what you do as your bo as your business is where you kind of have all your vested in interest in, in all of the payroll reporting agents that have tax pieces, they have people that are specifically, that’s what we do. So we do talk a little bit more tax. We’re usually, like with the M P R C, we’re on the front lines trying to see what legislation is and what guidance means, and then how does that translate to our employers and their tax returns. So how does that work across what we communicate on behalf of our employers to the agency so that we know, oh, this is what this piece is and we can be that intermediary. And it, it’s, it definitely is something that should help ease some of the concerns.

Granted with all the, and the issues that are out there, it’s hard to say, you know, take it easy and relax. We know that these things are just as urgent as the employer feels because the employer, I mean, the, the notices are not written in such a way to be sweet. And, and so that’s what tax does. I mean, yeah, and we know it. So, you know, we’re the ones that are sitting here on our calendar scheduling, okay, it’s time to call the IRS and put another hold on again. And, you know, just continue to do what we’ve gotta do on behalf of our customers knowing that that’s what we do. We do taxes. And so we’re familiar with that.

VANNOY:

Yeah. Yeah. All right. Let’s, let’s jump to this. You were, you were kind of teasing this, this issue out. So, you know, the prior prior topic was the sequencing of the notices themselves. And so kind of explaining away why you might have never gotten a warning and all of a sudden you’re, you’re getting this super threatening attempt to levy notice what’s, what seems like out of the blue. But there’s this extra problem that generates even more paper and more confusion into the process around kind of two trains passing in the night, if you will. Definitely getting notices on things that you believe already resolved.

KIRBY:

And it’s true I mean, we, we started the backlog, like, we’ll say that back with the notices for second quarter that arrived in August, but we didn’t have resolution to fix ’em until September for some cases. But notices kept continuing, and then we had the resolution was the amended return that was filed, but the notice keeps coming until it gets processed. The i r s has been trying to work some of those as well. I’ve seen recently letters that have been sent out to employers from agents saying, hi, we’re responding to your response to our inquiry back in August, and we need another six weeks to review it. It’s March <laugh>. Yeah. So we know that, you know, this, this is the solution was out there, but the system is still triggering the urgent I need it right now.

Some of them are going to actual notices from agents now, which means it’s actually starting to be in somebody’s hands so we can get ’em to focus back. But if they don’t have the amendment in their hand, the solution’s still missing. Paper processing for paper returns we just now walked into in of late employers might have seen notices if their employment taxes were filed via paper. The agency was sending out notices saying, hi, I haven’t received your 9 41 for second quarter yet. Second quarter was filed in July, but they hadn’t gotten to process that box. And so we know that those are notices that were of late, the, the most popular volume that was coming out were for, again, paper nine 40 ones that were filed in July. We’ve got certifications proving that they were, they arrived healthy and happy in their little box or shipment, but agency hasn’t gotten to scan or implement those into the systems to stop the triggering of the notices. And now those notices are escalating and the resolutions been in their office for a few months.

Yeah, I think, I think things as we’re coming back to life from covid now, though, again, these are all of those big hurdles. I think we’re still gonna see issues because we’ve got the items at the end of this year in December the legislation passed and it opened up for those employers with P P P loans to be able to go back retroactively and take employee retention credits. Yeah. If they did not file their employee retention credit claim with the special fourth quarter rule, which meant you had to do it with the original 9 41 you filed in January, which is already passed, you have to go back and amend second, third, or fourth quarter of 2020. Yeah. and so the, the goal by legislation is to get the money back to the taxpayer as quickly as possible, but the movement of those processes and amendments is not quite moving that quickly. And so, again, N P R C is still still trying to work with the agency and and congress in some cases to be able to say, isn’t there another way that we can expedite some of this stuff to get the money back into the hands of the taxpayers so that they can get back to work doing their jobs and, you know, to help facilitate the recovery that the legislation is there to do. But it’s kind of being held ransom by the process as it exists today.

VANNOY:

So I talk about at the, at the top of the segment here about the echo of covid. This feels like there are, there are continuing waves, if you will. You know, the, the first, you know, of, you know, the IRS staff being outta the office, and then the, the backlog of paper that builds, then that’s compounded by the legislation, which kind of calls in and almost begs for new amended returns. So the backlog is compounded by you know, a, a huge amount of more volume than this out of sync process of notices to resolution that something might already solved. But the, you get a nasty letter. And so what do you do? You pick up the phone and you call the irs so that now you’re taking your end there time to, to talk about something that’s already been resolved further compounds the, the resources I issue. Yep. it feels like, just like echoes, they kind of slowly fade, but then these waves just keep on coming for a long time. Do, where do you, where do you, do you see light at the end of the tunnel? I’m assuming we do, but you know, when, when, when do we is the backlog still growing or is it shrinking? And if it’s shrinking, you know, when, when do we return to a state of normalcy in your best, best guess?

KIRBY:

I know that the agency has thrown resources at it back in November, December timeframe, just after they started to slowly come back, they were talking about expanding the hours of work for their agents to be able to process inbound information and outbound information. They were starting to work multiple shifts to bring back some normalcy. I think it’s gonna be a while, especially with legislation, cuz it keeps changing dynamically and some of the approaches are gonna help fuel some of that backlog, you know, to make it the, to continue to grow what they’re working on trying to solve. Yeah. I I believe that it’s gonna be a while before it gets completely smoothed out. We still have things that are going on in Congress that we’re looking at. And I think, like you mentioned at the beginning of the session you have the unemployment and you have states that need assistance.

 With that it impacts the, the employer unfortunately, with the federal unemployment tax and how federal unemployment, they’re, they’re lending money to state agencies for unemployment and eventually those payments are gonna do be due back to the Fed. And that’s, it sends us back into the futo credit reductions that we had in the past. More states may end up on that list because of covid and so that might be one of our future waves that’s coming in in another year or two. And again, we’re still paying back our employer Reten or the deferred Social security employee deferred social security through this year, and then by the end of the following year. Yeah. So we’re looking at ripples. They’re gonna get smaller, but it’s gonna take us a while.

VANNOY:

Yeah, yeah. All right. Let’s, let’s do this. So it’s a complex world. What, what would you, what, what advice would you give, and maybe, maybe I shouldn’t have just said clients, cuz we have, you know, what will be a resource for all small businesses and entrepreneurs in this program? So what, what’s your best advice for, for, for guiding entrepreneurs, small businesses, managers and mid-size companies? How to, how to navigate these waters?

KIRBY:

Hold tight. First off, it’s, it, it’s, it is bumpy and Asure and the tax filing team even here, we realize that it’s tough out there. We know that all the notices are important. We’re getting out there too, the agencies daily, hourly. And I would say continue to send in those notices. Understand that the, the agencies are behind as well. And so while they seem to be escalating and cuz they, you know, the notices say that they are it’s one of those that we gotta kind of hold tight because we know that they’re sending them and people are responding to them, and yet the total response and the closure is not happening as quickly as we would really like it to be. I know that the IRS is trying to address that. They usually are very good at, you know, trying to stick to their six week, six to nine week turnaround on most things.

And I know that that’s what they’re trying to get back to, especially for like their amendment processing. But because we’ve been so far away from that for this period of time and with all of the volumes that potentially may continue to go in with, you know, changing legislation, we just, you know, it’s, it’s gonna be tough. It is a tough world, but as long as we communicate and we try to, you know, at least realize that the agency’s working with us and we’re working with them and we continue to try to keep that focus out there and to protect our customers, that’s, that’s the best that we can do.

VANNOY:

And, and, and just practically speaking, if you’re an Asure client and you get a notice, what should you do? If you’re not an Asure client and you get a notice, what should you do?

KIRBY:

For an Asure customer? Send your notice into your support person. Get it into us as quickly as possible. I would even say that, you know, if, if you’re one of our more savvy groups, take a look at the information that was processed on your payroll, nine times outta 10, everything is accurate or correct, but it’s those one, those one items that could be some of the issues, but for the most part, don’t, don’t delay on getting that notice in here so that we can go ahead and start interacting with the agency for those employers that are out. That sometimes means that you would be stepping out of what your business is. And so hopefully you have someone on staff that’s able to help you with that or your C P A or your tax authority, but engage them as quickly as you can.

 Understand that it’s, it may have a quick, easy solution, but getting the solution into the system to close the item is what seems to be what’s delaying the most. So it, it, it is a quick, there’s a lot of quick answers, but the problem is just getting the answers into the IRS and get that, get that switch turned off so that it can be resolved. So understand, as long as we’re pursuing that and we have interactions and that the agency is getting it, we may see further notices come. But at, at this point in time, I think that’s almost an, you can expect to see that. Yeah. but it’s one of those that, you know, we’ve gotta continue to push, we’ve gotta continue to provide the information, we’ve gotta continue to work with the agents that we have that are available so that they can assist us until such time that we get to that point where there’s a little more balance. We’ve been escalating stuff like this as well to our national liaisons and such so that the IRS is aware and they’re trying to take those extra steps to respond as well. So I think, you know, both sides are working, it’s just how long is it gonna take us to get together and finally iron it out.

VANNOY:

Yeah. And I guess maybe my, my final guidance to everybody would be the IRS is probably a lot more friendly than most people think. So long as definitely you’re proactive in, in cooperative no problems ever, almost no problems ever go away by ignoring them. And this is one definitely you definitely do not wanna ignore. I would also say, you know, take a deep breath. It’s probably not nearly as bad or scary as you might think it is. Just don’t, don’t sit on it. You know, re if you’re, if you’re not an insured client, respond to it. If you are, get it to your customer support rep as soon as we can. They will handle it to groups of people just like Terri who this is what they do for a living and, and, and they’ll work the issue for you.

So we, we, we, we expect a lot of noise still in the system. And Terri just, you know, this has been every time I talk to you, I get smarter about tax. So I I I really enjoy our conversations and I, and I, and hopefully this is a lot of good information for our clients and everybody else as well. So thank you for joining us today, Terri, and all, all your insights. I’m sure I’m gonna be asking you to come back and, and, and, and share additional updates as the year progresses.

KIRBY:

Great. Sounds good.

VANNOY:

And thanks to everybody else for joining us today. Just a reminder, what as Asure does, we provide human capital management services, that’s payroll and tax, HR time attendance, and HR services for small businesses. Over 60,000 of them where we help grow teams, save money and become more efficient in can’t wait talk until we talk to you guys next week. Thanks so much.