IRS Shrinks Tax-Return Backlogs as Next Filing Season Nears

wsj.com:

WASHINGTON—The Internal Revenue Service significantly shrank its backlogged pile of tax returns during 2022 but still faces a challenging tax-filing season ahead, according to a report released Wednesday.

As of Dec. 9, 2022, the IRS had 1 million individual returns and 1.5 million business returns awaiting processing, according to the report from Erin Collins, the national taxpayer advocate, who runs an independent taxpayer-assistance operation inside the IRS. By Dec. 23, the IRS had lowered those figures to about 400,000 and 1 million. Those totals are down from 4.7 million unprocessed individual returns and 3.2 million business returns as of Dec. 31, 2021, after a combination of pandemic-era closures and new tax-code provisions slowed the agency’s work.