January 6, 2010
If you've found the customer service from the Internal Revenue Service lacking lately, you aren't alone. In a report to Congress, National Taxpayer Advocate Nina E. Olson warned increased demands on the IRS have eroded the agency's ability to meet taxpayer service needs.
But more than poor customer service is at stake. Olson expresses concern that IRS collection practices are harming financially struggling taxpayers without producing significant revenue gains.
Hello?
The report designates the IRS's declining ability to answer telephone calls as the most serious problem facing taxpayers. Olson notes that the IRS has set a target for FY 2010 of answering only 71 percent of calls from taxpayers seeking to speak with a customer service representative about account questions, down from 83 percent in FY 2007.
"In other words, the IRS is planning to be unable to answer about three of every 10 calls it receives," Olson said, adding that the IRS expects those who get through will have to wait an average of 12 minutes. The report states that this projected level of service is barely above the level of 69 percent notched in 1998, when Congress passed the landmark IRS Restructuring and Reform Act due in large part to concerns about inadequate taxpayer service.
"This level of service is unacceptable," Olson wrote.
With Congress spending record amounts of money, the government's tax collectors need to pull in every dollar that taxpayers owe. But Olson's report suggests the tax-collecting agency is not well positioned to accomplish that. Her report contains a detailed assessment of IRS examination and collection practices, concluding that many practices have been developed piecemeal and that the IRS lacks an effective overarching strategy to maximize voluntary compliance. The report also concludes that IRS collection practices often harm taxpayers without producing revenue.
Some liens do little good
In particular, the report cites IRS lien filing policies as the second most serious problem facing taxpayers. The IRS uses automated systems to file liens against taxpayers in a variety of situations, even when the taxpayer possesses minimal or no property and the lien will do little more than damage the taxpayer's financial viability and access to credit.
A study conducted by Olson's office found no obvious causal relationship between the number of lien notices filed and the amount of overall revenue collected. Over the past decade, the IRS increased its lien filings by nearly 475 percent -- from about 168,000 in FY 1999 to nearly 966,000 in FY 2009 -- yet overall inflation-adjusted collection revenue declined by 7.4 percent during this period.
A second study found that IRS procedures for determining a taxpayer's ability to pay outstanding tax liabilities may be driving some taxpayers into long-term noncompliance because the IRS fails to consider other debts such as credit card balances, school loans, and actual hospital or medical bills. Other tax systems, including Sweden's, consider the taxpayer's overall financial picture.
"Any taxpayer with these debts will tell you that these creditors don't go away," Olson said. "Taxpayers are placed in the intolerable position of agreeing to pay the IRS more than they can actually afford and then defaulting on the IRS payment arrangements when they channel payments to unsecured creditors in order to get some peace. Thus, the IRS itself fosters noncompliance by its failure to take a holistic approach to the taxpayer's debt situation."
The National Taxpayer Advocate recommends that Congress require the IRS, before imposing a lien, to make a determination that the benefits of filing the lien outweigh the harm to the taxpayer and will not jeopardize the taxpayer's ability to comply with future tax obligations.
Data concerns
The report expresses concern that the IRS does not maintain sufficient reliable data to assess the effectiveness of its collection practices in several respects. But it praises the IRS for moving ahead with plans to regulate federal income tax preparers. Olson called the plan, which the IRS issued earlier this week, a "significant, far-reaching initiative."
However, Olson expressed concern that one aspect of the plan may create a significant gap in the new rules that may be widely and increasingly exploited. Under current law, anyone may prepare a tax return for compensation, with no training, licensing, or oversight required. While attorneys, CPAs, and Enrolled Agents must pass difficult examinations to practice, others (known as "unenrolled preparers") are not required to do so.
To protect taxpayers and improve tax compliance, Olson has proposed since 2002 that unenrolled preparers be required to register with the IRS, pass an examination, and complete periodic continuing education courses.
The IRS plan announced this week would impose these requirements on return preparers who sign tax returns but not on preparers who meet with taxpayers and prepare their returns if someone else signs them.
To minimize cost and burden, a return preparation business may decide to employ one "signing" preparer who is certified under the new IRS rules and an unlimited number of "nonsigning" preparers. The nonsigning preparers would not have to register, pass an exam, or take continuing education courses, and the signing preparer would be unable to thoroughly review every return he signs.
Assessing tax administration today, Olson concludes that the IRS "is subject to three diverging forces -- increased responsibility for non-core tax administration duties, increasing demand for taxpayer service (including telephone assistance), and declining resources to meet that demand, and collection policies that mask a laissez faire attitude toward taxpayer harm under the guise of efficiency.
"The taxpayer is wedged in the middle of these forces, being pulled in all directions, but never the right one," Olson writes.
