Not an expert, but I suppose information returns refer to things like 1099s, W-2s, etc. And in the context of us US citizens living in the UK (or anyone with foreign accounts over $10k), Form 8938 would be a information return too.
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-tax-report/millions-of-destroyed-tax-forms-deal-reviled-irs-fresh-black-eyeThe news was buried in this Treasury report:
https://www.treasury.gov/tigta/auditreports/2022reports/202240036fr.pdf"
Temporary closure of Tax Processing Centers continues to result in significant backlogs
of paper tax and information returns to be processedAs we reported, the IRS closed its Tax Processing Centers in March and April 2020 in response to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Since reopening its Tax Processing Centers in June 2020, the IRS continues to have a significant backlog of paper-filed individual and business tax returns that remain unprocessed. The continued inability to process backlogs of paper-filed tax returns contributed to management’s decision to destroy an estimated 30 million paper-filed information return documents in March 2021. The IRS uses these documents to conduct post-processing compliance matches such as the IRS’s Automated Underreporter Program to identify taxpayers not accurately reporting their income. IRS management advised us that once the tax year concludes, the information returns, e.g., Forms 1099-MISC, Miscellaneous Information, can no longer be processed due to system limitations. This is because the system used to process these information returns is taken offline for programming updates in preparation for the next filing season."
