The Internal Revenue Service is scurrying to send out the second round of economic stimulus payments by January 15. However, it’s nigh impossible for such a massive government bureaucracy to get this right in such a tight timeframe. The agency admits it has sent payments to closed or inactive accounts, and this will result in headaches and significantly delayed payments for many Americans.

This isn’t the first time the IRS’s problems have caught our attention—back in 2019, The Buckeye Institute asked the agency to improve its rules for returning or unfreezing wrongfully levied assets and accounts to law-abiding business owners after the owner of a Columbus-area manufacturing business had just such a harrowing run-in with the agency.

Unfortunately, some of the most powerful politicians in Washington—including Senator Elizabeth Warren—have proposed to expand the role of the IRS to create a “free” online tax filing system and pre-prepare tax returns for some Americans. Count us skeptical that this idea could be implemented successfully considering the agency’s problems executing the responsibilities it already has. The last thing the American people need is another Healthcare.gov fiasco.

Although it’s understandable that the IRS would have issues doling out gobs of money to nearly every American, these problems underscore why it’s important that the IRS stay in its lane: Collecting taxes and auditing returns. 

Greg R. Lawson is a research fellow at The Buckeye Institute.