An urgent extension is needed in part because of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic's effects on the Internal Revenue Service and taxpayers, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., and Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Bill Pascrell, D-N.J, said in a statement.
"We demand that the IRS announce an extension as soon as possible," the lawmakers said.
"We want to remind the IRS that many Americans continue to face the same health and economic challenges that necessitated an extension last year," the statement read.
Then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced the extension of the filing deadline in 2020 to July 15 in light of the novel coronavirus pandemic after the IRS extended the tax payment deadline.
Pascrell and others have made repeated pleas to the agency to extend the filing season, but IRS officials have publicly dismissed the idea on multiple occasions.
IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig recently said during a Federal Bar Association conference the agency had no plans to extend the filing deadline. That followed his similar comment during a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing in February. Ken Corbin, who is both the IRS' Wage and Investment Division commissioner and chief taxpayer experience officer, also told reporters on a February press call the agency had no plan to extend the filing deadline.
The IRS didn't immediately respond to a comment request Monday.
Pascrell previously joined a group of other House Ways and Means Democrats in seeking an extension of the tax filing and payment deadlines.
The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants has also called for an extension of the filing and payment deadlines. Further, AARP sent a letter in February to Neal, Pascrell, Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, and Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., calling for an extension of the filing season. Brady is the ranking Republican on Ways and Means and Kelly is the top Republican on the Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee.
Neal and Pascrell also cited a provision of the American Rescue Plan passed by the Senate as a reason the filing season extension was needed. That provision would exempt $10,200 of unemployment compensation from tax for people with adjusted gross incomes of $150,000 or less for tax years starting in 2020.
"Taxpayers need more time to file accurate returns and get their questions answered by the IRS," Neal and Pascrell said.
They again criticized the pace of the filing season, as they had previously. The IRS pushed the start of filing season to Feb. 12 this year, saying it needed more time for programming and testing of its systems.
As of the end of February, the number of returns filed by the IRS was down some 25% compared with the same time last year, the lawmakers said.
The IRS said Friday it had received about 45.3 million returns through Feb. 26, compared with about 59.3 million returns from the beginning of the filing season last year through Feb. 28, 2020.
Over a comparable period last year since the beginning of the filing season, the agency had received only about 40 million returns, according to its figures.
--Additional reporting by Joshua Rosenberg, Dylan Moroses and Stephen Cooper. Editing by Leah Bennett.
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