The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration yesterday released  Taxpayer Payments Were Improperly Transferred to the Excess Collection File (2011-30-020):

Taxpayer payments that cannot be applied to the proper taxpayer account are transferred to the Excess Collection File (XSF). … When research is required on a request for transfer to the XSF, the Excess Collections File Addition (Form 8758) should be fully completed to ensure credits are correctly added to the XSF.  TIGTA reviewed a statistically valid random sample of 86 small-dollar cases with transfers between $50,000 and $100,000 and another random sample of 66 large-dollar cases in which the transfer to the XSF was more than $1 million.  TIGTA determined that the documentation was not sufficient in 135 (96%) of 140 requests (12 cases were not reviewable).  TIGTA estimates that requests were not properly documented for 729 taxpayers with credits totaling more than $604 million transferred from their accounts into the XSF.