IRS Says It Sent 260K Missing Return Notices In Error

The Internal Revenue Service erroneously sent around 260,000 missing tax return notices to people who may have filed their 2019 returns but have not had them processed by the agency due to pandemic-related shutdowns, the agency said in a statement.

The IRS said Thursday that it shouldn't have sent the roughly 260,000 CP59 notices earlier in February because the agency hasn't actually finished processing returns for the 2019 tax year.

The IRS has been slow to process returns from the last filing season because of the novel coronavirus pandemic, which required some agency employees to work from home and led to a now-cleared mail backlog. 

--Additional reporting by David van den Berg. Editing by Neil Cohen.

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