SALT LAKE CITY — Coordinated protests and financial hardships for Internal Revenue Service workers may inhibit the government’s ability to process taxpayer refunds on time.

The IRS has released a contingency plan in which they ordered 46,052 staffers to return to work through the shutdown, according to CNBC. These individuals are expected to work and process refunds without receiving a paycheck. They have not been paid since before December 23, when the shutdown began.

IRS employees around the county, some out of protest and others out of financial hardship, will not be clocking in. According to Tony Reardon, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, along with several local union officials reported to the Washington Post that the absences are widespread and would include employees anywhere from a processing center in Ogden to the Brookhaven campus on Long Island in New York.

Individuals who aren’t in high-salary jobs feel the biggest impact from not receiving pay. The employees being told to return to work and process refunds without being compensated are normally making between $25,800 and $51,000 a year.

“They are definitely angry that they’re not getting paid, and maybe some of them are angry enough to express their anger this way,” Reardon, whose union represents 150,000 employees at 33 federal agencies and departments, told the Washington Post. “But these employees live paycheck to paycheck and they can’t scrape up the dollars to get to work or pay for child care.”

There is a provision in their union contract that allows workers in the IRS to miss work if they suffer a “hardship” during government shutdowns, according to labor groups. A hardship could encompass anything from an empty gas tank to a child-care bill.

“I’m at the point where I cannot afford to go to work,” Marissa Scott, an IRS customer service representative who is out on hardship leave, told the Washington Post. She lives outside Kansas City, Missouri, and has to drive 98 miles to and from work each day. “I cannot afford to fill my gas tank,” Scott added.

Scott told the Washington Post that she ordinarily helps as many as 50 people per day with their tax returns during tax season and that the shutdown might delay refunds for months.

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Last year, in the first week after the IRS began accepting tax returns, they received 18.3 million tax returns and processed 6.1 million refunds. Luckily, IRS workers won’t have to manually process all of these. The tax process is pretty much entirely automated for tax returns that have been filed electronically and for refunds that are brought on by direct deposits, according to USA Today. Only those returns which trigger review will face delays, as workers will have to look over the cases.

“If there are no glitches on a return that requires no intervention, then those returns will go through fine and those refunds will be issued in the normal time frame,” Kathy Pickering, executive director of The Tax Institute at H&R Block, told USA Today. “Where people are going to have issues is if they need to interact with the IRS or something on a return needs further review.”

Diligence needed

Diligence in getting tax returns done correctly, as well as filing them electronically, will help ensure that refunds will be returned on time. Still, getting taxes done correctly might be an issue for individuals who have questions and can’t get them answered.

“The IRS should have sufficient staff to process routine returns, including refunds, relatively quickly,” a recent post from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center stated. The organization added that “this year, taxpayers surely will run into problems,” primarily due to limited IRS staff available to answer questions.

The Tax Policy Center stated: “Taxpayers who can’t get answers from the IRS are more likely to make mistakes, and if their returns have errors, staff shortages may slow processing and delay refunds.”

Live customer service via phone isn’t available during the government shutdown, but the IRS is hoping to add workers to cover the lines, the Washington Post reported. Lengthy wait times can be expected when calling for questions. Taxpayer assistance centers are also closed during the shutdown, so help won’t be received in person.

According to Time, the IRS made a statement in early January that the agency will be processing tax returns on its normal schedule, beginning on Jan. 28. The last day to file taxes, like usual, will be April 15.

“We are committed to ensuring that taxpayers receive their refunds notwithstanding the government shutdown,” IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig told AARP. “I appreciate the hard work of the employees and their commitment to the taxpayers during this period.”

Expect some impact

Despite these assurances, taxpayers can expect to feel at least some impact. During the 2013 government shutdown, when 90 percent of IRS workers were furloughed, around $2.2 billion in tax refunds were delayed. This government shutdown has become the longest in history, so its potential effects remain unknown.

IRS employees are not the only ones failing to show up for work as a result of the government shutdown. According to the Washington Post, on Sunday the number of TSA agents who didn’t show up for work hit a record 10 percent. Guards at federal prisons have also been reporting very high rates of skipping work, as have USDA meat inspectors. The resulting effect is that those who do show up have to work 16-hour shifts to compensate.

As Washington remains in turmoil over the border wall, federal workers around the country hope that the shutdown will end soon. Duncan Giles, who worked for 24 years at an IRS call center, said, “Every single person wants to be at work.”

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