four recommendations for congress.
by 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 research
do you dare dream the impossible dream? try dreaming this one: you call the irs.
more: hello, irs? anybody home? | wanna change the tax world? | tax season 2019 serves up a taste of the future | the big free-file flop | the demise of schedule a? | survey: busy season goes sour | lessons learned: how the federal shutdown hit busy season 2019 | tax refund fury roils busy season
exclusively for pro members. log in here or 2022世界杯足球排名 today.
on the second ring, an operator answers. you tell him you’re a tax preparer. he hears your question and immediately passes your call to the right person in the right department.
nice dream! very daring! now try this one: after talking with your tax client about the phone call you just made, you call back … not just back but back to the same person who heard your case the first time. no need to explain everything to somebody new. you pick up where you left off, and in no time at all, your problem is resolved and your client’s case is closed.
impossible dreams?
they shouldn’t be, according to the irs’s taxpayer advocacy service. neither taxpayers nor tax practitioners should have to spend half an hour wandering around the irs phone maze only to spend another hour or two on hold … and then not get their case resolved, requiring them to call back and explain it to someone else all over again.
a specific employee for each case
some irs “functions,” such as field collection, designate a specific employee to follow a given case until it is resolved. nice idea! but several functions do not, among them correspondence exam, return integrity compliance services, automated collection system and math error.
when a taxpayer or practitioner calls one of those departments a second or subsequent time, the call goes to the next available examiner – rarely the person who already knows something about the case.
there are several problems with this system.
- callers waste time with every phone call.
- callers and irs employees waste time with repeated explanations of cases, problems and histories.
- it’s hard if not impossible to hold a series of employees accountable for their action or inaction.
- callers frustrated with the obtuse inefficiency of the system tend to not be in a cooperative mood and may be less than enthusiastic about paying their taxes.
not a new problem
this is not a new problem. twenty years ago congress told the irs to develop a procedure, “to the extent practicable and if advantageous to the taxpayer,” to assign one irs employee to handle a given case.
the irs made little improvement, apparently thinking that “advantageous to the taxpayer” meant minimizing costs and thus minimizing taxes. calls still go to the next available agent. the irs says that system minimizes time spent waiting.
unfortunately, any time saved is more than lost as the caller has to explain everything all over again.
the national taxpayer advocate has complained. the treasury inspector general for tax administration has complained. the government accountability office has complained. several million taxpayers and tax practitioners have complained.
to little if any avail.
the national taxpayer advocate’s annual report to congress is the latest complaint. the report states
… the irs should assign a single point of contact through the lifetime of a taxpayer’s case or at least allow taxpayers the ability to communicate with such a person on a repeat basis. while this simple point of contact is impracticable and generally unnecessary for isolated account issues or tax law questions, it is important and valuable for both taxpayers and the irs in areas typically involving ongoing dialogue, such as compliance cases or offers in compromise.
no complaint tracking mechanism
not having an irs agent identified with a specific case relates to yet another problem – the lack of a comprehensive means of finding managers and a mechanism for issuing and tracking complaints. some irs units allow direct contact with managers. even then, however, there is no system for
- identifying recurring problems
- identifying problematic employees
- creating a paper trail of complaints and responses
- evaluating the quality of responses to complaints
- providing an accurate picture of taxpayer experiences
the tas also says that the lack of a tracking mechanism or paper trail may cause taxpayers to be reluctant to lodge complaints out of fear of retaliation.
“the irs must commit to improving the overall customer experiences by putting these mechanisms in place and holding employees and their managers accountable for their treatment of taxpayers,” the report states.
the national taxpayer advocate, nina e. olson, who heads the tas, isn’t one to just complain. her report to congress on this issue concludes with four recommendations:
- provide all members of the general public with an accessible and easily searchable irs directory that incorporates metadata and common-speech terminology to assist taxpayers in contacting particular offices within the irs.
- institute a 311-type system by which taxpayers can be transferred by an operator to the specific office within the irs that is responsible for their cases.
- adopt a model for correspondence examinations and similar cases … in which a single employee is assigned to the case while it is open within the irs function.
- establish a complaint and inquiry tracker that monitors and records requests to speak with supervisors, subsequent followup and the results of that contact.
is that too much to dream?