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“The Accounts Management [telephone lines] Level of Service measure has taken on outsized importance in recent years, as the IRS has allocated resources to hit ambitious but arbitrary goals that mean less than meets the eye and that consequently have required the IRS to neglect calls to non-Accounts Management telephone lines and workstreams like paper correspondence that I believe should receive higher priority. The measure is causing the IRS to prioritize the wrong work, and it needs to be replaced.”
Although Filing Season 2024 was an overall success, and the IRS met the service goals set by the Secretary of the Treasury, backlogs still persist with amended returns, returns suspended as a result of a possible error, taxpayer correspondence, and Identity Theft Victim Assistance cases. After the filing season, taxpayers will continue to submit correspondence and file tens of millions of tax returns on extension. Thus, it is imperative that the IRS focus substantial resources during the rest of 2024 to catch up on its current backlog, timely process all incoming tax returns, pay out pending refunds, timely resolve Identity Theft Victim Assistance cases, and prevent carryover of unprocessed returns into 2025, while still providing taxpayer service through its toll-free lines and walk-in centers. The IRS needs to eliminate the word “backlog” from its vocabulary by modernizing the processing and scanning of paper returns, focusing on suspended and amended returns, issuing all pending refunds before the close of the year, and starting Filing Season 2025 fresh.
TAS Case Advocacy and Other Business Objectives describe additional activities TAS will pursue to advance its advocacy efforts through casework and systemic advocacy and through the Taxpayer Advocacy Panel and Low Income Taxpayer Clinics. TAS works directly with taxpayers and their representatives to identify issues, research solutions, and advocate on behalf of taxpayers. TAS’s goal is to continuously improve its internal and external processes and business operations for the benefit of taxpayers. This section details planned TAS activities for organizational improvement and promotion of its advocacy efforts.
TAS’s Case Advocacy and Other Business Objectives for FY 2025 are:
TAS Research Objectives focus on understanding how IRS procedures affect taxpayers and how taxpayers react to IRS actions. The objectives of TAS Research are to improve IRS operations and assist the IRS with balancing its compliance and enforcement efforts with taxpayer rights while also reducing taxpayer burden.
Four new research projects are scheduled for FY 2025.
