Taxpayer Advocay Panel Reports on IRS Customer Service

CCH Federal Tax Weekly (Issue 35) reported on the TAP 2008 Annual Report. The TAP is a group of 101 volunteer community members appointed by the Department of the Treasury and makes recommendations for improvements.

 

Major recommendations include:

• Preparer registration: TAP endorsed the regulation of taxpayers, pointing to Oregon and California showing improvements in tax preparation.
• Installment Agreements: Recommended rasing the cap on streamlined agreements to $30,000 from $25,000 and to 72 months from 60 months.  
• Return Processing:  Recommended that the IRS move to automated screening (scanning?) and data entry technology for processing tax returns.  The IRS still keypunches every paper-filed tax return. 

I'm not sure that expanding the streamlined IA agreements is going to help.  The IRS reported this August that most IAs default somewhere between the 12th and 24th month.  They have new measures in place to allow for a missed payment without defaulting the agreements, but it will take time to see if it will be effective.