Practitioners Walk Fine Line On Silent Returns

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced it would accept returns in which tax filers don't indicate if they had health insurance. These "silent returns" have raised questions about whether the IRS will enforce penalties on taxpayers down the road. Attorney Nicole Elliott, a former IRS senior advisor for the Affordable Care Act, weighed in on the matter.

"Given the executive order, it's unclear if they would be going after people, but they can always say, 'We saw you had a refund but you had a silent return, could you give us some more information?' " said Ms. Elliott. "They can do a correspondence audit (if) they want to. It's a bit unclear how they would do it, but they could slice and dice silent returns once they come in the door."

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