Professor John Plecnik

C|M|LAW Professor John Plecnik was quoted in Tax Notes Today, this morning, on reducing the error rate for the earned income tax credit.

The following quote appeared in EITC ERROR RATE GROWS; IMPROPER PAYMENTS TOP $ 13 BILLION, 2014 TNT 93-3:

“John T. Plecnik of Cleveland State University’s Cleveland-Marshall College of Law told Tax Analysts that increasing the IRS’s budget is one way to address EITC errors. Every increase in the IRS budget results in more tax revenues collected or fewer dollars inappropriately granted as credits, he said.

“I think solution number one is the IRS is underfunded, and they frankly need to have a larger enforcement budget if we expect them to have a more accurate administration of the earned income tax credit or any other program,” Plecnik said.

Another solution is for the IRS to wait to confirm the information on a return before issuing a refund, Plecnik said. “We shouldn’t be pushing the IRS to issue refunds preemptively,” he said. “Maybe that means people don’t get their refund until April or May as opposed to February, but I think that’s a small price to pay to avoid putting out billions of dollars in inappropriate credits.”