IRS Backlog -- Disappeared?

[BobKamman]

EDITED:  Now I notice that the update starts out, "As of September 11, 2021, we had 8 million unprocessed individual returns."  So keep your eye on the difference between "unprocessed returns" and "returns requiring special handling."  The 8 million number is consistent with the trend all summer of reducing the backlog by about a million returns per week.  That means IRS will be caught up by Thanksgiving, except of course there will be all those October 15 returns to sort out between unprocessed and special handling.  And the government might still shut down in October, or be unable to pay out refunds because of the debt limit.  

I find this hard to believe.  The latest IRS update on 2020 return processing, posted today, says:

"The IRS has reduced the number of returns requiring special handling from an historical high of 9.8 million on May 1, 2021 to the current level of 436,000 individual returns as of September 11, 2021."

Just two weeks ago, the update told us:  " As of August 27, 2021, we had 9.2 million unprocessed individual returns."

Was there a button that the Commissioner pushed to turn off the review process and just let the cash flow?  Was it because they are afraid the government will shut down when the fiscal year ends in two weeks?

I did notice a refund was issued on a return filed in February but held up because of a missing Form 8962 that was supplied in March.

[sjrcpa]

I also find this hard to believe.  

"The IRS has reduced the number of returns requiring special handling from an historical high of 9.8 million on May 1, 2021 to the current level of 436,000 individual returns as of September 11, 2021."

As of September 4 the special handling count was about 800K. I was skeptical of that, too.