18.6 million individual Americans reportedly owed the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) a combined $360 billion in overdue taxes in 2022, according to the IRS. Yahoo Finance Live anchors Akiko Fujita and Rachelle Akuffo break down this data and the reality of US tax debt.

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Editor's note: This article was written by Luke Carberry Mogan.

Video Transcript

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SEANA SMITH: It is time for our chart of the day. Tax season is upon us. And we're taking a look at tax debt. 18.6 million individual taxpayers owed the IRS $316 billion in overdue taxes at the end of 2022. But the breakdown varied with about 5 million taxpayers owing under $1,000 to the IRS, and almost 6.3 million owing between $1,000 and $5,000. Rachelle, moral of the story is pay your taxes. But this is an interesting story out of "The Wall Street Journal" today, which points to some people who haven't paid since 2013.

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Those who maybe got caught up during the pandemic sort of still trying to clear the pipeline. But an important reminder here in the piece, which is something we've talked about before the Inflation Reduction Act adding for more IRS officers here, really going after, at least in this story, high wealth individuals. High income, high wealth individuals. I don't know. I am not a person who starts my taxes early, but I do make sure to pay it if I owe.

RACHELLE AKUFFO: I mean, I usually put mine in at about February because sometimes, there are some sort of last minute changes, like I know when it comes to like the child tax credit that they were still working out. And I saw an article saying, don't pay your taxes too early in case there are a few of these things still lingering.

But yes, they did highlight in the article that a lot of these IRS collection efforts were actually paused during the pandemic. And they didn't have the manpower to work through it. So I think people sort breathed a sigh of relief and thought, oh, maybe I'm doing all right. But they're like, no, the tax man cometh. We're up and running. And so perhaps expect a smaller refund this year as well.

And of course, you don't just have to wait for some scary letter to come in the mail. You can always negotiate with the IRS or once you get sort check in on the IRS website, try and pay it up early and at least take some of that stress off. But difficult times. Now, if you haven't paid since 2013, I mean, that's a different story. But at least for the recent ones, at least--