The Government Accountability Office on Friday released Opportunities Exist for IRS to Enhance Taxpayer Service and Enforcement for the 2010 Filing Season (GAO-09-1026):
We recommend that the Commissioner of Internal Revenue take the following five actions.
- Develop and document a strategy to prevent and resolve errors causing electronically filed returns to be rejected.
- Involve stakeholders from the paid preparer and tax software industries in IRS’s current reject working group.
- Develop an action plan for its reject working group that includes such elements as the scope of responsibility, a plan for testing changes, and a schedule for implementing changes.
- Provide paid preparers and software providers with clearer descriptions of why returns are rejected.
- Implement a low-cost automated method for providing volunteer site locations and hours of operation to taxpayers.
In order to provide a low-cost option that helps ensure compliance with recent legislation, we suggest that Congress consider providing IRS with math error authority to (1) use the prior year’s tax return information to automatically verify taxpayers’ compliance with the 2008 first-time homebuyer credit payback provision, and (2) ensure that taxpayers do not improperly claim the credit in multiple years.
