The U.S. House Ways and Means Committee advanced bipartisan legislation on Feb. 12 that would simplify tax filing and payment.
The Electronic Filing and Payment Fairness Act, H.R. 1152, would apply to documents and payments submitted to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) electronically. It would eliminate late fees and administrative burdens for the nearly 90 percent of taxpayers who file electronically.
“This commonsense bill, which has been included in the National Taxpayers Advocate’s Purple Book of Legislative Recommendations, would simply amend the tax code to apply the ‘mailbox rule’ to electronic submissions of payments and documents to the IRS,” said U.S. Rep. Darin LaHood (R-IL), who introduced the bill. “Under current law, if a taxpayer physically mails a payment or tax return to the IRS that is postmarked on the due date that payment or a tax return is considered timely, even if it was received a week later.”
The bill moves to the full House of Representatives for consideration.
U.S. Reps. Suzan DelBene (D-WA), Randy Feenstra (R-IA), Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), Jimmy Panetta (D-CA) and Bradley Schneider (D-IL) cosponsored the bill.
The committee considered four other pieces of legislation last week. It also advanced the Pandemic Unemployment Fraud Enforcement Act that extends the statute of limitations for combatting and prosecuting theft of COVID-19 unemployment benefits.