The unspoken disaster waiting to happen in next year's tax returns: 'It's a national hot mess'

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The unspoken disaster waiting to happen in next year's tax returns: 'It's a national hot mess'

Daily Mail
By BEN SHIMKUS
6 December 2025



Karla Dennis has spent two decades guiding anxious taxpayers through IRS bureaucracy.

But this year, the enrolled agent and chief executive of KDA Tax Consulting is fielding an unusually high volume of questions about the tax season - and it's not even December yet.

For example, one of her small business clients requested a new PIN from the agency months ago. With W-2s due in just over a month, the owners are still in limbo.

'They still don't have that resolved,' Dennis told the Daily Mail. 'So, they can't file their taxes electronically.'

They are not alone.

Dennis says people in her line of work end up acting like emotional triage for clients, and calls tax professionals 'second responders' - not the person who shows up to a fire or medical emergency, but the one who helps guide taxpayers through the emotions of IRS bureaucracy.

She believes a three-part collision of government paralysis, climate disasters and a scrambled tax code is about to land with a daunting thud on taxpayers' desks in early 2025.

'Oh, it's absolutely going to be a nationwide hot mess,' she told the Daily Mail.

1. A rewired tax code nobody knows how to use
2. The shutdown still looms over everything
3. Natural disasters have turned paperwork into chaos

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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/yourmoney/article-15329829/irs-tax-return-crisis-california.html