In the days leading up to Christmas, without referring to it as such, the Internal Revenue Service revealed that it would be giving a “Christmas present” to roughly 4.6 million Americans who owe back taxes for the tax years 2020 and 2021, as an incentive for those taxpayers to pay up their past-due amounts.

That “gift” involves waiving nearly $1 billion in late-payment penalties. By law, interest tied to that overdue money cannot be forgiven by the IRS – and continues to accumulate.

If the newly announced gesture achieves its desired result – bringing the “missing” money into the federal coffers – the IRS decision will be viewed as acceptable by many Americans. However, perhaps many more taxpayers – those who pay their taxes on time – will disagree with handing out such a break to taxpayers whom they might judge as irresponsible, even unpatriotic.

All considered, those who will disagree will not be harboring an unreasonable opinion, just as those with the opposite opinion have a right to praise the IRS move as potentially productive in terms of obtaining much overdue money more quickly.

Nevertheless, some statistics tied to overdue federal taxes are deeply troubling. Here is what the Dec. 20 edition of the Wall Street Journal reported:

“As of year-end 2022, 18.6 million individual taxpayers owed the IRS $316 billion in overdue taxes, up from 16.8 million owing $308 billion in September 2019.”

According to the Journal’s report, one reason for the increase in tax debtors is that many Americans who were accustomed to receiving a tax refund found that they now had a balance due.

Compounding that situation was that, during the pandemic, the IRS stopped sending out many collection letters, hoping that the letter halt would both help struggling taxpayers and reduce its backlog.

It is reasonable to believe that some overdue taxpayers might have felt that the breadth of the pandemic would cause the IRS to forget about pursuing the money that they owed, but in the big picture the IRS doesn’t forget – nor should right-thinking Americans feel that it should.

Tax revenue funds the nation, although it is acceptable to disagree with how some of that money is allocated. Members of Congress and the president have the responsibility to properly guide the spending process.

The Journal quoted IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel, who said, “We have been concerned about taxpayers who haven’t heard from us in a while suddenly getting a larger tax bill.”

It is true that with interest and penalties growing, many taxpayers likely were in the dark about how much they owed, and difficulty reaching the federal tax agency, especially during the pandemic, did not help matters.

Even now, some taxpayers who filed amended returns a year or two ago still are awaiting IRS processing, with another tax-filing year about to begin.

According to the Journal, the penalty relief in question applies to taxpayers who owe under $100,000 in taxes for 2020 or 2021 and who received an initial balance-due notice on or before Dec. 7, 2023. The relief will expire for debts not paid by April 1.

Those who already paid the penalties in question and who would have been eligible for the IRS’ current incentive are receiving a refund or credit on their IRS account.

Plenty of room remains for second-guessing the IRS action, while many of those benefiting from it are smiling about their good-fortune “holiday gift.”