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March 14, 2019 at 10:25 AM
Robert Bloink and William H. Byrnes
The 2017 tax reform legislation made changes to the income tax brackets, limited or suspended various itemized deductions and suspended the personal and dependency exemptions from 2018-2025.
Because of these substantial changes, the IRS and Treasury Department developed new withholding tables to help employers estimate how much income tax to withhold from employee paychecks. In some cases, the new withholding tables resulted in situations where insufficient income taxes were withheld throughout the year, so some taxpayers are now finding that they underpaid for 2018 and will owe the IRS additional taxes in addition to the generally applicable underpayment penalty. The IRS has announced that it is providing penalty relief to certain taxpayers who underpaid during the 2018 tax year.
We asked Professors Robert Bloink and William Byrnes, who write for ALM’s Tax Facts and hold opposing political views, to share their opinions about this underpayment relief, and whether it would be sufficient to help taxpayers who underpaid because of tax reform in 2018.
Their Votes:
Byrnes
Bloink
Their Reasons:
Below is a summary of the debate that ensued between the two professors:
Byrnes: The underpayment relief provided by the IRS and Treasury should be more than sufficient to help those taxpayers who underpaid their tax liability in 2018 because of the new tax law changes. So long as these taxpayers paid at least 85 percent of their tax liability, as opposed to 90 percent of tax liability, throughout the year, they will not be subject to any penalties at all.
Bloink: All underpayment penalties should be waived for taxpayers who underpaid their tax liability throughout the year in reliance on withholding tables developed by the IRS and Treasury. The current penalty relief does not go far enough. We’re talking about an income tax system that was entirely revamped beginning last year, so that taxpayers couldn’t even rely upon the usual methods for determining tax liability during the year. If the underpayment wasn’t the taxpayer’s fault, which is the case in the vast majority of cases this year, the taxpayer should not be penalized.
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