More Americans Owed IRS Money After Trump’s Sweeping Tax Reform

More people ended up with a tax bill this tax season compared to a year ago, according to new data from an Internal Revenue Service watchdog.

There were 23.4 million returns with a balance due in the 2019 tax season — the first after President Donald Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act took effect — up 5.4% from the 22.2 million a year earlier, the Taxpayer Advocate Service said in an annual report released Thursday.

The IRS’s watchdog department said the rise was “perhaps an unintended consequence” of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Not surprisingly, more taxpayers called the IRS for help figuring out how to deal with their tax bill this past tax season. The IRS “Installment Agreement/Balance Due” toll-free phone line had a 13% jump in call volume, the report noted.