IRS awards $1K bonuses to ‘surge team’ employees tackling tax return backlog

The IRS is telling temporarily reassigned “surge team” employees that they will need to continue their work cutting down the agency’s pandemic-era backlog of tax returns through the end of the year.

But to thank employees for their efforts, which have cut the backlog by more than half since the start of the year, the IRS is giving these frontline workers a onetime $1,000 bonus.

IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig, in an email to IRS employees last month, said most eligible surge team employees should have received their $1,000 Special Act Award in September, with “the few remaining awards distributed later this year.”