Audit: IRS mail program improved, could do better

An IRS program designed to help promote voluntary tax compliance has made improvements but could do more to reduce taxpayer burden, a new audit found.

The Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration reported that, even as the agency has developed new guidelines for the Correspondence and Discretionary Examination Program, its audit still found errors in roughly 45 percent of the cases it examined. 

Those errors, the audit found, occurred at times because examiners did not consider a taxpayer’s response before closing a case.

“While our report concluded that the IRS has made improvements to the examination program, it is critical that examiners follow all established procedures, including taking fully into consideration the information that taxpayers provide,” Russell George, the tax administration inspector general, said in a statement. 

The IRS had made changes to the program, which conducts examinations solely through the mail, after taxpayers complained about the length of the process and the availability of — and their treatment by — agency employees. The new mail model process has not yet been implemented at all program sites.

In its recommendations to the IRS, the inspector general recommended that the program’s employees follow current guidelines until that process is fully operational.

The agency agreed with those recommendations, but was not on board with the inspector general’s conclusion that a taxpayer was burdened if his or her correspondence with the IRS program did not have a timestamp. The inspector general asserted that, without the timestamp, a taxpayer could not be assured his or her message had been dealt with in a timely manner.