The AICPA has asked the IRS to be kind to tax payers who haven’t had enough taxes withheld from their checks or haven’t prepaid enough of their taxes.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act made substantial changes to the way our taxes work, but many Americans didn’t make the corresponding changes to their withholding to compensate for the changes.  The result might be that automatic penalties for not having enough withheld kick in.  The IRS has agreed to lower the threshold for charging penalties but the AICPA wants it to go further.

The recent government shutdown hasn’t helped matters along. Although there are currently about 5 million pieces of unopened mail at that IRS, automated collections notices still go out. Taxpayers who receive these notices couldn’t find anyone to help with the matter and things snowballed.

Barry Melancon, AICPA President and CEO, told members that, “there are literally thousands of unanswered questions on the tax reform act from the beginning of 2018 that I think will put CPAs and other tax professionals in a different set of judgments they have to make, different conversations they will have with their clients and a degree of uncertainty. I actually think all of those things are good and prove the value of professionals in that space, I think that there’s a huge opportunity for professionals to change the relationship with clients, when you start to talk about a much greater number of gray area aspects.”  Click here to read the details about all of this.