IRS Urged to Focus on Customer Service with New Funds

What do you do if you are suddenly giving a substantial budget increase? The American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) thinks the IRS should focus more on taxpayer service.

In a letter to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Department of the Treasury, the AICPA is urging the IRS to place greater emphasis on taxpayer service as it develops its strategic plan for the $80 billion in additional appropriations provided in the Inflation Reduction Act. AICPA expressed concern over the insufficient allocation of funding to improve these services to appropriate levels, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted how underfunding led to unprecedentedly poor customer service levels.

The AICPA suggested that more funding be allocated to service-related issues, including:

  • Employee training to replace institutional knowledge due to the aging workforce retiring
  • A comprehensive customer service strategy
  • Better access to timely information and tailored resources, especially ones specifically for tax professionals
  • Better technical infrastructure so that legacy systems can communicate with each other
  • A practitioner services division that would centralize and modernize its approach
  • Continuing its business systems modernization initiatives for more efficient and timely services
  • Reducing the backlog of unprocessed paper tax returns and correspondence
  • Suspending certain automated collection notices until it is prepared to devote the necessary resources for a proper and timely resolution of matters
  • Streamlining reasonable cause penalty waivers based solely on the pandemic’s effects on both the taxpayer and the practitioner without requiring a written request, similar to the procedures of the FTA administrative waiver

AICPA emphasized that while the Inflation Reduction Act allocated $45.6 billion to enforcement activities and only $3.1 billion to service, enforcement actions must be in balance with the services the IRS provides to taxpayers. The organization suggested that the IRS communicate the start date of automated collection action to the public and identify what actions will be part of this process while providing resources for taxpayers to deal with these actions.

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