When accounting goes unaccounted for
Remember how the military tried to recruit Call of Duty players to be drone pilots? Maybe the IRS can take a page from their book and convince young people there is first-person fun to be had bum-rushing naughty taxpayers’ homes.
There’s no shame in asking for help, IRS employees, if that’s what this is about. Don’t forget that the Commish isn’t too proud to ask for help.
In 2008, the year for which most recent data was available, IRS computer programs flagged compliance issues for more than 8,000 of its 109,469 employees and ultimately determined that almost 2.8% had not complied with the law. But those monitoring systems missed 133 additional employees who were potentially not compliant with tax law over a two-year period, according to the audit. The employees were flagged for potentially filing their tax returns late, paying their taxes late, not reporting all of their income and at least one example of a criminal investigation with an additional tax assessment.
Treasury Report: IRS Must Beef Up Oversight Of Its Own Employees [Dow Jones]
The mother of all auditors, the Government Accountability Office, had heard some complaints that maybe the IRS wasn’t doing such a bang-up job on the whole Phase two.
After snooping around, the GAO issued a new report that explained that the IRS needs to work on explaining just what it is they do an why they do it.
Web CPA:
The IRS has no documented objectives for the notice phase and no performance measures to indicate how well the phase is performing in resolving debt cases or achieving other desired results…
…However, in almost all cases, for the five business rules the IRS identified as affecting the most taxpayers, the IRS did not have information on the date the rules were established, the rationale for the rule, or data supporting the rationale…
…IRS collection officials also lacked documentation describing the business rules and how they operate. Further, even though IRS officials estimated that the business rules had been established for years, IRS had documentation for an evaluation of only one of the five business rules.
Let’s recap:
• “…no documented objectives…”
• “…did not have information on the date the rules were established, the rationale for the rule, or data supporting the rationale…”
• “…lacked documentation describing the business rules and how they operate.”
• “…documentation for an evaluation of only one of the five business rules.”
Apparently this is one of those cases where the Service says, “Trust us, we have a plan. But don’t ask us to explain it, we wouldn’t want to bore you. Oh, and don’t ask us how well it’s working. We don’t get too hung up on statistics or success rate.”
We’re just talking about tax dollars after all.
IRS Has Trouble Tracking Debt Collection Notices [Web CPA]
The most nagtastic wing of the Federal Bureaucracy, the Treasury Inspector General of Tax Administration, gave an extremely tepid thumbs-up to the IRS today for satisfying the needs of taxpayers using services at Taxpayer Assistance Centers (“TAC”).
If you look at the TIGTA’s report, you’ll find a fairly neutral title, “Surveys of Taxpayers With Tax Account Issues Indicate They Are Satisfied With the Service They Received at Taxpayer Assistance Centers.”
However, if you read the title of the press release you’ll find things take considerably less enthused turn, “TIGTA Survey Finds Taxpayers Generally Satisfied With Level Of Service Received At Taxpayer Assistance Centers.”
Why the unnecessary adverb TIGTA? If you remove the ‘generally’ the title remains informative, so may we ask what the unspoken element is here? Are you insinuating that the IRS sucks at everything else it does and this particular survey just happens to stray from the narrative?
Hell, even Inspector General/Head IRS nag, J. Russell George, was caught off guard and offered the following “what have you done lately,” statement, “The IRS should continuously ensure it is providing the best available service to all taxpayers, including those with tax account issues who visit their Taxpayer Assistance Centers, and find cost-effective ways to do so.”
When asked, “Overall, I was satisfied with the customer service I received from the IRS during my visit to the IRS walk-in office,” 75% of those surveyed responded “Strongly Agree.” If you can get 3 out of 4 people to say that their experience with the IRS was positive rather than “I was giving strong consideration to strangling one of the employees with my shoelace,” you best recognize a job well done.
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Are they really hiring 87,000 actual agents? Or are a lot of these jobs going to be filing, answering phones, sorting mail, low level admin tasks that have very little to do with actual audits.
Personally, I don’t have a problem with the IRS getting a bigger budget. Anyone who’s been on hold for 6 hours to talk to someone at the IRS just to verify some taxpayer data should welcome this news.
All this scaremongering is silly, and so is all the animosity towards the IRS. It’s like being mad the police because they arrest you for robbing a bank, they just enforce the laws – they don’t make them.
Everyone need to chill. The IRS has been long overdue for a larger budget and and upgrade on their systems. This is a good thing everyone. Relax.
Not quite. People are, correctly, angry with the police for harassment or overreach of authority, and having more IRS agents will have the same effect. Animosity toward the IRS is wholly justified and fear of its expansion is rational.
Just like the police, it’s not just about enforcing the laws, but how the laws are enforced. How they exercise their power.
And, further, if the laws they are enforcing are unjust, opposing the arm of enforcement is also reasonable.
A huge expansion of the IRS is not something to be celebrated.
Uhh idk about y’all but I’ll celebrate the IRS hiring people to answer the phones for sure
In over 100 years there have only ever been 8-9,000 IRS Agents filling law enforcement positions…the 87,000 are more likely to be revenue agents, auditors, and admin staff…
I’m sorry, but I kind of love that one dude with “CPA” written on his little military style helmet. Gonna go show this pic to my kids and tell them that’s what mommy does for a living.