The Taxpayer Advocate Service (TAS) is an independent organization within the IRS. Led by the National Taxpayer Advocate, TAS is your voice at the IRS.
The National Taxpayer Advocate’s Annual Report to Congress creates a dialogue at the highest levels of government to address taxpayers’ problems, protect taxpayers’ rights, and ease taxpayers’ burden. Some of the problems discussed in this report were first identified when taxpayers came to TAS for help in resolving problems with the IRS.
The National Taxpayer Advocate delivers this report directly to the tax-writing committees in Congress (the House Committee on Ways and Means and the Senate Committee on Finance), with no prior review by the IRS Commissioner, the Secretary of the Treasury, or the Office of Management and Budget.
The primary sections of the report include:
The National Taxpayer Advocate’s Preface describes many of the challenges taxpayers faced this year. The Prologue also includes a Taxpayer Rights and Service Assessment measuring how the agency is doing in protecting and furthering taxpayers rights and service while driving voluntary compliance; a Most Serious Problems At a Glance document breaking down the ten most serious problems taxpayers faced this year and related key statistics; and the Highlights of TAS Successes Throughout the Past Year.
Each year’s Annual Report to Congress identifies the ten most serious problems facing taxpayers and offers recommendations to fix them. These issues can affect taxpayers’ basic rights and the ways they pay taxes or receive refunds, even if they’re not involved in a dispute with the IRS. As your voice at the IRS, the National Taxpayer Advocate uses the Annual Report to elevate these problems and recommend solutions to Congress and the highest levels of the IRS.
An analysis of the top ten most litigated issues in federal courts.
The TAS Case Advocacy function is primarily responsible for direct contact with all types of taxpayers (including individuals, businesses, and tax exempt entities), their representatives, and congressional staff to resolve specific problems taxpayers are experiencing with the IRS. Information from these contacts and case results are vital to TAS’s statutory mission to propose changes in the IRS’s administrative practices to alleviate taxpayers’ problems and identify potential legislative changes to relieve such problems. This section of the report discusses how TAS fulfills its mission to assist taxpayers with their specific issues and concerns involving IRS systems and procedures.
The 2021 Purple Book presents a concise summary of 68 legislative recommendations that the National Taxpayer Advocate believes will strengthen taxpayer rights and improve tax administration. Most of the recommendations have been made in detail in prior reports, but others are presented in this book for the first time. She believes that most of the recommendations presented in this volume are non-controversial, common sense reforms that the tax-writing committees and other committees and other Members of Congress may find useful.
