Happy New Year!
Well, the good news according to news sources is that you will still get your refunds when you file your return, but the bad news is just about everything else.
I would suggest that if you owe taxes and are on a payment plan, you should still continue to send your payments if you are not set up to pay via a wage withholding or EFT.
For anything else such as offers in compromise, audits and other tax issues, there is no one at the IRS to interact with to determine the status of your cases and when the shutdown ends, the IRS will be even more behind. So, whatever you sent will take even longer to actually be reviewed and considered.
More importantly, there are a slew of regulations that we tax professionals are waiting on word from to determine how they will be implemented.
There are also a lot of changes from last year’s Tax Act that will have to be implemented and will cause confusion over the next few weeks. The IRS may not be ready to handle all of the questions regarding the changes. I’ve gone over most of the changes that are coming under the Act, but if you’d like a summary of it, it can be found here. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p5307.pdf
Hang in there and if there are any questions about what to do with the new changes in mind, please let me know!