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 identifies taxpayers’ problems and provides suggestions to further protect taxpayer rights and ease taxpayer burden.
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 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.
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. Additionally, TAS has a Most Serious Problems At a Glance document breaking down the ten most serious problems taxpayers faced this year and related key statistics.
The section discusses the ten federal tax issues most frequently litigated during the preceding year and contains an analysis of cases petitioned in the Tax Court rather than simply decided cases, providing a much broader view of issues taxpayers bring to court.
In this section, TAS reports on some of its 2022 advocacy updates and highlights. We begin with a report from our Case Advocacy function, followed by a new report from our Systemic Advocacy function. The Advocate summarizes the National Taxpayer Advocate’s fiscal year (FY) 2022 Taxpayer Advocate Directives and share the Highlights of TAS Successes Throughout the Past Year.
For the National Taxpayer Advocate, thorough research and analysis of current tax issues and trends is a vital part of the Annual Report. TAS research projects yield accurate, insightful data that informs her advocacy for taxpayers and strengthens her authority and arguments before the IRS and Congress.
The 2023 Purple Book presents a concise summary of 65 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. The Advocate believes that most of the recommendations presented in this volume are non-controversial, common sense reforms that the tax-writing committees, other committees, and other members of Congress may find useful.
