It turns out that the 2.4 million are only those returns they have not even started to work on. There are still 5 million returns where they have contacted the taxpayers, and are waiting to hear back. Their responses may be in unopened mail.

IRS does not get the 1099-G file until the end of March, so that is the earliest they can start matching to returns already filed, and attempting to figure if refunds are owed. “Let us take care of it” for now, but they will update that advice if it turns out they can’t. The major issue is on joint returns, figuring out how to allocate the exclusion between spouses. (He didn’t mention community property, but I wonder if that’s what he was thinking.)

Lots of people at IRS are working on mandatory overtime. They still have computer programs that run on COBOL, which few people know. But only 16% of IRS equipment is outdated, compared with 45% a few years ago.