but. there’s always a but.
by 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 research
every year, national taxpayer advocate erin m. collins submits to congress a report on the 10 most serious problems taxpayers face in dealing with the internal revenue service.
more: why we all hate the tax code | how bullish are you this tax season? | accountants’ top problems for tax season 2023 | tax season 2023: better or worse?
exclusively for pro members. log in here or 2022世界杯足球排名 today.
this year, reporting on the frustrations of 2022, the nta had no shortage of bad news, but collins did note a glimmer of hope. “we have begun to see light at the end of the tunnel,” she wrote. “i am just not sure how much further we need to travel before we see sunlight.”
that distant glimmer in the place where the sun never seems to shine is the fact that the irs has made considerable progress in reducing its volume of unprocessed returns and correspondence from last year’s filing season.
but … here comes a new filing season, and if last year is any indication, there will be problems.
the 10 most serious problems
in a nutshell, here are the 10 most serious problems of 2022.
1. processing delays
for the third year in a row – and we can blame covid-19 for a lot of this – the irs failed to pay timely refunds to millions of taxpayers, especially for paper-filed returns.
2. complexity of the tax code
no improvement here. tax laws are still overly complex and burdensome, discouraging voluntary compliance.
3. hiring and recruitment
weaknesses in the human capital office’s hiring, recruitment and training programs are hampering efforts to provide staffing adequate to taxpayer needs.
4. poor telephone and in-person service
hello? anybody home? not for 87 percent of taxpayers who called the irs last year. and it wasn’t much better for tax professionals, who got through to a practitioners priority service line only 16 percent of the time, and only with an average on-hold time of 25 minutes. contacts at taxpayer assistance centers plummeted from 2.3 million in 2019 to 1.3 million in 2022. correspondence cycle time increased from 74 days to 207 days.
5. poor online access for taxpayers and practitioners
inadequate digital services impeded case resolution, forcing millions to resort to phone calls and correspondence that weren’t answered.
6. inefficient e-file and free file
barriers to e-filing and the absence of free, easy-to-use free file software caused millions to file hard-to-process paper returns, resulting in delays where there were supposed to be efficiencies.
7. lack of transparency
lack of transparency about processing delays and other key data frustrated taxpayers and probably discouraged voluntary compliance.
8. lack of practitioner oversight
an absence of minimum competency standards for practitioners left taxpayers, especially those of low income, vulnerable to errors by those who prepare returns, resulting in overpayment of taxes or legal liability for underpayment.
9. appeals delays
staffing challenges and institutional culture are preventing timely, high-quality service within the irs independent office of appeals.
10. barriers for overseas taxpayers
taxpayers overseas – u.s. citizens, resident aliens living abroad, foreign people with tax obligations – face highly complicated rules and extra difficulties in trying to communicate with the irs.
but all the news is not bad.
- the irs has largely worked through its backlog of unprocessed returns (though suspended returns are still a problem).
- congress has provided the irs with additional funding for customer service (though there are now congressional efforts to roll back that funding).
- with a new direct hire authority, the irs has been able to hire 4,000 new customer service reps and 700 additional employees for taxpayer assistance centers (though it still takes too long to find and hire new staff).
in its ongoing effort to improve one of the main causes of tax practitioner frustration and stress, cpatrendlines will be exploring these top 10 problems for analysis by the professionals who make american taxation work.