All IRS Employees Ordered to Evacuate

Effective March 30, 2020, the IRS issued an evacuation notice to all employees to “evacuate” from their worksite and perform work from their home during this pandemic. In doing so, the IRS invoked a provision in federal regulations that allows it to require telework-eligible employees to perform work from their home, regardless of whether they have a telework agreement in place at the time the evacuation notice is issued. According to the regulation, once that authority is invoked, employees may be assigned any work considered necessary or required to be performed during the period of evacuation, without regard to their grade, level or title.  Employees failure or refusal to perform assigned work may be subject to disciplinary action and could result in the termination of pay.

Although formal office operations are temporarily suspended, buildings will remain open and IRS space is accessible for activities such as processing mail, retrieving work materials, using office equipment, getting supplies, and other tasks necessary to support working from home (or an alternate location).    Questions exist whether this will cause major delays as to emergency virus relief payments to millions of individuals and pending refunds from 2019 tax filings.   The IRS has numerous resources in place and critical employees are still required to come to work so hopefully it doesn’t cause any major interruptions with the needed virus relief and refund payments.

Wilson Tax Law Group endorses any tax relief efforts being sought to assist those communities, industries, businesses and individuals negatively affected by the outbreak. Although tax relief doesn’t solve the problem it helps mitigate the financial fallout. If you or your business has comments or concerns or require professional and diligent legal tax help, contact the Wilson Tax Law Group at 949-397-2292.