Erin M. Collins, National Taxpayer Advocate
Source: IRS
LAS VEGAS – After a tough three years for taxpayers, the IRS has come through significant improvements. According to him, there is still work to be done National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins.
“This filing season was probably as close to normal as it gets,” she said in the annual report of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. conferencewhich took place June 3-6 in Las Vegas.
However, despite the increase in customer service, the agency is still working on a significant backlog – including amended returnsfiling in suspense and other correspondence, she said.
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Collins leads Advocacy service for taxpayers, an independent organization within the IRS that provides one-on-one advice and works on systemic change. The National Taxpayer Advocate leads about 80 statewide problem archivist offices, consults within the IRS, reports annually to Congress on the agency’s biggest challenges, and makes legislative proposals.
Collins said the IRS is currently juggling 3.7 million amended returns, 6.8 million “in suspense” with missing information and 5.3 million pieces of correspondence. “Those are pretty big numbers that the IRS is still dealing with,” she said.
This season, the agency prioritized phone service, answering more than 85% of calls from key phone lines in less than five minutes.
“But it came at a cost,” Collins said, because the phone assistants process the paper returns during downtime from taking calls. “The problem is we’re now back to a backlog of paper correspondence and amended returns, similar to a year ago,” she said.
Concerns about directly testing the registration system
Collins also raised concerns about the agency’s plans for new programs amid the current backlog.
In May, the IRS announced testing for a free online direct registration systemwith the pilot program starting for some taxpayers during the 2024 filing period.
Nearly three-quarters of taxpayers expressed interest in the free filing system provided by the IRS, according to a 2022 survey cited by the agency feasibility report.
We cannot go into another registration season with another backlog.
Erin Collins
National Taxpayer Advocate
Collins said that while she believes the IRS has the technical capability to implement direct filing, she has concerns about the timing. “The IRS is still not out of the hole they dug themselves,” she told CNBC.
“We cannot go into another registration season with another backlog,” she said. “We need to remove that word from the IRS vocabulary.
“No more backlogs,” she added.
Collins also pointed to state tax issues, particularly for the more than 40 states that rely on federal returns for resident state filings. If you separate those returns, it could cause problems for the IRS, she said.