UPDATE: MERIDIAN TOWNSHIP - Originally set to begin eight days earlier, January 30, marked the kick off date for the 2013 tax season.

Debates surrounding the fiscal cliff, caused the tax season to be pushed back and many tax returns to not be processed until mid February. This delay, due to a decision made by Congress, led the IRS to be delayed as well.

" Congress did not do that timely enough for the IRS to go in and reprogram their computers to be able to accept tax returns through their computer systems," said Tom Johnson, owner of Eastside Tax and Accounting and enrolled agent withe the IRS.

Many of the tax breaks have to do with education.

"There's educational credits, work opportunity credits, american opportunity credits, there's lifetime learning credits and there's also hope credits," Johnson said.

Credits such as the American Opportunity credit would reduce taxes by $2,500, the Hope Credit would reduces taxes by $2,000 to $2,500, and the Lifetime Opportunity tax would reduce taxes by $2,000. Theses are a few of the credits re-instituted by Congress this year on the tax return.

Congressional decisions, have led to tax season delays in the past. However, the recent kick off to tax season led a crisis to be averted.

"Many of those credits would have gone away if Congress hadn't acted," Johnson said. "If they can't agree and they can't do their job, then we may well have a severe economic decrease because of it, but for the tax season that has been averted."



ORIGINAL STORY: MERIDIAN TOWNSHIP - Tax returns for the 2013 tax season