(Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images) June 30, 2021 7:57 PM ET Font Size: The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) ended this year’s filing season with more than 35 million unprocessed individual and business tax returns, according to a government watchdog report released Wednesday. In its report submitted to Congress, the National Taxpayer Advocate’s office at the IRS found that 16.8 million paper tax returns are still waiting to be processed and an additional 15.8 million returns have been placed on hold for further review. Another 2.7 million amended tax returns have not yet been unprocessed. Although most taxpayers were able to successfully file their returns, the report found that a record number were not, as unprocessed tax returns this filing season were more than four times greater than the number reported at the end of the 2019 filing season prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.