Taxpayers who filed paper returns to the IRS may wait 6 months for a refund

• Americans who filed taxes on paper may have to wait 6 months for a refund check.
• That's according to testimony from national taxpayer advocate Erin Collins at a House hearing.

If you filed your taxes on paper this year, you may be getting a spooky surprise in October: Your refund check.

Refund checks will take about six months to arrive for paper filers this year, according to testimony at a House subcommittee hearing on Thursday from national taxpayer advocate Erin Collins.

Collins, the IRS watchdog, has been sounding the alarm for months on the pile of paper that the agency has been buried under. In her annual report to Congress at the end of 2021, Collins said that "paper is the IRS's Kryptonite, and the agency is still buried in it." As of late December 2021, the IRS was sitting on 5 million pieces of taxpayer correspondence, according to Collins.

It hasn't gotten much better in the past four months. "Paper remains at the heart of the agency's challenges," Collins said at the Thursday House subcommittee on government operations hearing. She noted IRS employees scrutinize paper forms carefully and they have to deal with the 2020 paper backlog first.

Tax examiner Shawn Gunn previously told Insider that IRS workers struggle to find enough staples or carts to move around stacks of paper.

The IRS has struggled to deal with additional pandemic-related duties like administering stimulus checks and advance child tax credit payments last year, layered on top of chronic underfunding and understaffing. That's led to an unprecedented backlog of unprocessed tax returns. Collins estimated that, as of the end of December, the IRS had a backlog of 6 million unprocessed original individual returns and 2.3 million unprocessed amended returns.

At the April 21 hearing, IRS commissioner Chuck Rettig estimated that the agency still had to work through 2.4 million paper returns filed in calendar year 2021. Rettig has said repeatedly that the agency needs more funding to carry out all the duties it's tasked with.

"We're asking the IRS to boil the ocean," Rep. Gerald Connolly of Virginia said at the Congressional hearing of the agency's massive workload and lack of resources.

Treasury officials this week said the agency could be nearing a breaking point. "Today's deadline is an inflection point in what has been the agency's most challenging filing season in recent history," Natasha Sarin, Treasury counselor for tax policy, wrote in a blog post published Monday.

Those funding issues, and the resulting backlog, have implications beyond just a pile of paper. Some taxpayers have been left waiting on refunds for months. Filers previously told Insider that refund check delays have made it harder to afford groceries, childcare, and even their homes. And, with the 2021 filing season wrapping up, some taxpayers are still waiting on checks from years past.