“all it takes is money.” sounds easy? except for the politics.
by 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间
wow! we asked for it, and we got it: an avalanche of advice on how to fix the irs.
卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 has always received smart, candid, and often outspoken responses to our busy season survey— thousands of tax preparers from sea to shining sea telling us what’s happening in their offices.
but this year, halfway through the season, we asked a loaded question: how would you fix the irs? the professionals in the trenches of tax prep know what the problems are and what to do about them. they also seemed a bit miffed (to put it mildly) that the solutions seem so obvious, yet the problems keep compounding.
almost every response suggested something in at least one (and often all) of these five interrelated areas:
funding
staff
technology
telephones
politics
richard walton, esq., ea, cfp, pe, msee, an attorney and tax preparer in ventura, calif., says “place trained accountants, not attorneys, in key irs management positions” and adds “make decisions on cost to taxpayers for compliance, not just cost to government, to improve overall economy and total function efficiency.”
and is there a tax professional who doesn’t agree with jared c. lawless, a solo practitioner in rayne, la., who says, “i am a cpa and would like to have a direct representative to work with on all issues, someone who would know me and not have to give me the third degree each and every time a call is made, someone who can be my customer representative without an attitude that i am the enemy.”
many were the calls for more professional staff—more professional and more of them. gloria besley, head of a small cpa office, says, “irs is funded as a service organization. due to shortage of staff, over-worked, and poorly trained agents, taxpayers are getting a disservice from irs. let’s hire more representatives and put service back into the internal revenue service we are paying for.”
and the phones!
“the present telephone system for making inquiries is impossible,” says anthony gualario. “the wait is ridiculous, and the customer service people are not able to deal with more than the most basic issues.”
the issue of funding and budget came up very often, often in connection with politics. steven katz, ea, writes, “get congress and politics out of the equation. congress retains oversight but government shutdowns exempt the irs—all of it…stop using the irs as a political football.”
“all it takes is money!” says another. “most of the irs problems are caused by congress. either via budget cuts or law passage.”
there were also several calls to simplify the tax code. several objected to the 1040 postcard. a few suggested eliminating the income tax or eradicating the irs, though only one suggested an alternative:
“create a national sales tax. everyone would pay, no exemptions or deductions,” the anonymous respondent says. “the whole current system would go away, severely reducing the need for the complex codes and staffing needs.”
hmmm…that would also reduce the need for tax preparers, but maybe in the bigger picture, some kind of value-added tax would be a good idea. but that’s a discussion for another day.
we think it’s much to the credit of 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 professionals that those who have responded to our question aren’t just griping about the problems. they are offering solutions—good solutions, solutions based on facts, viability, and professional judgment.
and we want to hear more. america has a problem—a big problem—and america’s tax practitioners are the ones who can solve it. please, keep the comments coming in. let’s do this thing.
5 responses to “fixing the irs: tax professionals speak out”
i respectfully disagree with comments the irs being underfunded is the problem–especially as aca provisions fall away. two pervasive problmes exist, only one of which is within the irs’s control.
the 1st problem is how tax laws are enacted–both in terms of timing and content. that’s congress’s fault. changes in december or later for the current year’s application is insane. even worse is congress’s abdication of its responsibility to write laws correctly themselves and dumping on the executive branch to implement what congress should have legislated in the 1st place. one can only hope the chevron deference case before the scotus will have at least some impact.
the 2nd problem is the irs’s gross over-reach . the recent court case on ptins is just one example. the irs needs to enforce the law as written and stop overstepping its role. another example is form 8867’s checklist that basically says preparers aren’t competent enough to know what due diligence must occur and that forces us to call clients liars if they want to take a particular credit or filing status. yet, congress has pushed the irs to over-reach as it has. if the overreach were reined in, there would be plenty of resources to address the “service” part of the irs’s name. that it could have allowed $20 billion of refund fraud while pursuing issues like the ptin fee is proof of a broken system. the debacle with nfp applications a few years ago is another example of a system run amok.
no one person at the irs is to blame. my parents were career civil service army and irs employees with impeccable characters who worked extremely hard and with great dedication–as do many, many irs employees now. the problem is the system’s inherent quest for more power, self-preservation, and self-aggrandizement. the institution of the irs is broken and it needs to restrict its activities to those it should be performing, not those it can perform.
i am a practicing cpa for more than 30 years. i believe that the biggest issue with irs is the lack of adequate funding and also a serious lack of qualified personnel in the service due to the lack of funding. dealing with the irs has consistently gotten worse over the last several years, probably more than several years, actually.
i also agree that the irs should not be subject to furloughs for government shut downs.
i agree with my colleagues except for giving the irs more money. if you give them money for customer service, they hire more field investigators and close more service centers.
travis raml
field investigators are a thing of the past and/or for only the most critical cases. also its easy for funds to be earmarked to certain departments within the irs, rather then just assuming then money will be spent in the wrong area.
i’d argue that one thing the irs has done very correctly in the past 20 years is transition from low yield field investigations to higher yield solution with improved accuracy in determining what should be on a taxpayers return vs. what actual is.
then
having the irs’ automated system turn out thousands of correspondence notices and transferring most of the responsibility to taxpayers has been a very effective way in capturing lost revenue, while reducing labor costs in a department that should be much smaller then it once was.
is it a perfect system, no, though most notices i’ve seen have been materially correct over the years and its a much lower cost solution rather then the alternative in training and hiring thousands of field examiners to get similar results.
jeri l. cantrell
i am an enrolled agent who does tax controversy representation, i do not prepare returns. as a former irs collections group manager, i am appalled to now have clients in my ea practice who owe hundreds of thousands of dollars and are not even being contacted other than through notices. every r/o i deal with is in frantic mode, makes demands with long due dates, and then don’t respond regarding my submitted documentation for 4,6, or even 8 months. i actually have a client that i haven’t been called back on for a year. of course some clients prefer i wait and not seek a response but most are trying to take care of their issues. we end up having to resubmit information and make calls to leave messages which increases the taxpayers’ burden for paying for representation. understaffed and undertrained due to congressional disregard. who shuts down an agency that’s bringing in billions to the coffers? they won’t champion the irs because their constituents hate the irs. even if they increased the budget today and started hiring, does anyone understand that it takes at least 2 to 3 years to make even a moderately productive revenue officer….if they don’t quit first? i taught many revenue officer classes and the amount of information that’s thrown at them and the high expectations can be overwhelming. there is no quick fix for this. good luck irs!
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5 responses to “fixing the irs: tax professionals speak out”
joe eckelkamp
i respectfully disagree with comments the irs being underfunded is the problem–especially as aca provisions fall away. two pervasive problmes exist, only one of which is within the irs’s control.
the 1st problem is how tax laws are enacted–both in terms of timing and content. that’s congress’s fault. changes in december or later for the current year’s application is insane. even worse is congress’s abdication of its responsibility to write laws correctly themselves and dumping on the executive branch to implement what congress should have legislated in the 1st place. one can only hope the chevron deference case before the scotus will have at least some impact.
the 2nd problem is the irs’s gross over-reach . the recent court case on ptins is just one example. the irs needs to enforce the law as written and stop overstepping its role. another example is form 8867’s checklist that basically says preparers aren’t competent enough to know what due diligence must occur and that forces us to call clients liars if they want to take a particular credit or filing status. yet, congress has pushed the irs to over-reach as it has. if the overreach were reined in, there would be plenty of resources to address the “service” part of the irs’s name. that it could have allowed $20 billion of refund fraud while pursuing issues like the ptin fee is proof of a broken system. the debacle with nfp applications a few years ago is another example of a system run amok.
no one person at the irs is to blame. my parents were career civil service army and irs employees with impeccable characters who worked extremely hard and with great dedication–as do many, many irs employees now. the problem is the system’s inherent quest for more power, self-preservation, and self-aggrandizement. the institution of the irs is broken and it needs to restrict its activities to those it should be performing, not those it can perform.
mark j. swanson, cpa, cgma, cva
i am a practicing cpa for more than 30 years. i believe that the biggest issue with irs is the lack of adequate funding and also a serious lack of qualified personnel in the service due to the lack of funding. dealing with the irs has consistently gotten worse over the last several years, probably more than several years, actually.
i also agree that the irs should not be subject to furloughs for government shut downs.
johnny
i agree with my colleagues except for giving the irs more money. if you give them money for customer service, they hire more field investigators and close more service centers.
travis raml
field investigators are a thing of the past and/or for only the most critical cases. also its easy for funds to be earmarked to certain departments within the irs, rather then just assuming then money will be spent in the wrong area.
i’d argue that one thing the irs has done very correctly in the past 20 years is transition from low yield field investigations to higher yield solution with improved accuracy in determining what should be on a taxpayers return vs. what actual is.
then
having the irs’ automated system turn out thousands of correspondence notices and transferring most of the responsibility to taxpayers has been a very effective way in capturing lost revenue, while reducing labor costs in a department that should be much smaller then it once was.
is it a perfect system, no, though most notices i’ve seen have been materially correct over the years and its a much lower cost solution rather then the alternative in training and hiring thousands of field examiners to get similar results.
jeri l. cantrell
i am an enrolled agent who does tax controversy representation, i do not prepare returns. as a former irs collections group manager, i am appalled to now have clients in my ea practice who owe hundreds of thousands of dollars and are not even being contacted other than through notices. every r/o i deal with is in frantic mode, makes demands with long due dates, and then don’t respond regarding my submitted documentation for 4,6, or even 8 months. i actually have a client that i haven’t been called back on for a year. of course some clients prefer i wait and not seek a response but most are trying to take care of their issues. we end up having to resubmit information and make calls to leave messages which increases the taxpayers’ burden for paying for representation. understaffed and undertrained due to congressional disregard. who shuts down an agency that’s bringing in billions to the coffers? they won’t champion the irs because their constituents hate the irs. even if they increased the budget today and started hiring, does anyone understand that it takes at least 2 to 3 years to make even a moderately productive revenue officer….if they don’t quit first? i taught many revenue officer classes and the amount of information that’s thrown at them and the high expectations can be overwhelming. there is no quick fix for this. good luck irs!