The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration yesterday released Chief Counsel Can Take Actions to Improve the Timeliness of Private Letter Rulings and Potentially Reduce the Number Issued (2010-10-106):

[T]he IRS can take additional actions to more timely provide taxpayers with responses to their requests for PLRs.  TIGTA determined that Chief Counsel personnel did not always timely contact taxpayers after case assignment to discuss the taxpayer’s issues.  In addition, the PLR cases sampled for review were not always closed by Chief Counsel personnel in a timely manner.  Specifically, 50 of the 65 sampled cases involved an untimely PLR that was issued after Chief Counsel’s 120-calendar day goal (closures ranged between 121 to 3,548 calendar days).

Our review also showed that Chief Counsel is not monitoring available information to consider whether published guidance should be issued on certain issues.  TIGTA determined some PLR cases closed during Fiscal Years 2007 through 2009 related to similar issues.  Specifically, PLRs were issued to taxpayers more than 150 times for four of the top five most used issue codes during our audit period.  If Counsel issued more published guidance for these tax issues, it may prevent the need for a number of PLRs.

• Blog of Legal Times, Treasury IG Says IRS Private Letter Rulings Too Slow, Redundant