Less Itemizing Seen Under Tax Proposal
Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Roscoe L. Egger Jr. said Sunday that the tax simplification plan proposed by the Treasury Department would reduce the proportion of taxpayers using itemized deductions from “about 36% to something close to 15%.”
“In general I’m very supportive of and believe in the Treasury proposal . . . which is not dissimilar from the other proposals that have come in,” Egger said on ABC-TV’s “This Week With David Brinkley.”
While most Americans pay their taxes, the IRS estimates that nearly $90 billion that is owed will go unpaid. Tax compliance is down about 2 percentage points in the last decade, about $10 billion yearly, Egger said.
“For that reason, the Administration has agreed to increase our examination resource beginning in (fiscal) 1987 by about 2,500 (examiners) a year for three years,” Egger said.
As of Sunday, as many as 10 million Americans had not filed their 1984 federal income tax returns, the IRS said.
The agency ordered its nationwide hot line and walk-in offices held open until 6:30 p.m. local time today. Midnight tonight is the filing deadline.
Savings institutions readied for a rush of investors wanting to cut their taxes by buying Individual Retirement Accounts. And U.S. Postal Service employees stood by for what has become a spring ritual: late-night processions of cars and persons with tax returns in hand.
Bugs encountered in a new $103-million computer system installed late last year in the 10 service centers where returns are filed have thrown the IRS far behind schedule in processing returns and mailing refund checks.
The new system was not ready as soon as IRS officials had hoped last year, and Egger has said that he was forced to give it his go-ahead in November after being convinced that the old system would cause even more delays.
The year began with another unusual problem, a series of mistakes by one of the 10 IRS service centers that confused the accounts of 29,000 businesses.
Of the 60 million returns in hand a week ago, only 36 million had been processed--20% behind last year’s pace.
Although the IRS claims that most of the problems have been worked out, officials say that people can expect to wait up to 10 weeks before receiving a refund. But that can vary by as much as a month, depending on where a return is filed.
