Open Recommendations

The Small Business/Self-Employed Division Director, Field Collection, should continue to identify and perform sweeps of all types, including assessments of high-risk HINF geographical areas, as well as issue-based sweeps.

The Small Business/Self-Employed Division’s Director, Field Collection, should regularly review sweeps data to identify and correct errors and ensure that it is accurate and complete before using it for management reporting.

The Small Business/Self-Employed Division’s Director, Field Collection, should capture additional information in the tracking spreadsheet so management can better assess the productivity of each sweep. This should include information such as which delinquent tax return modules were secured, whether any of the returns had tax assessments, and the results of specific collection initiatives.

The Small Business/Self-Employed Division’s Director, Field Collection, should remind all levels of management of the sweeps desk guide procedures and provide refresher training on their responsibilities in the sweeps process.

The OIG recommends that the Executive Director for Operations establish a process to verify that all telework agreements are submitted and reviewed to maintain oversight and data integrity.

The OIG recommends that the Executive Director for Operations conduct periodic reconciliations between the telework agreements and the NRC’s payroll system to ensure the accuracy and completeness of employees’ telework statuses.

The OIG recommends that the Executive Director for Operations implement and document validation procedures to ensure submitted telework agreements are complete and records are maintained in compliance with NRC procedures.

The OIG recommends that the Executive Director for Operations require all official duty station changes resulting from telework to be supported by an approved agreement and ensure all relevant documentation is retained within the telework records.

The OIG recommends that the Executive Director for Operations implement a process to track the completion of corrective actions for discrepancies and ensure any unresolved issues are properly addressed.

The OIG recommends that the Executive Director for Operations implement a tracking system to monitor telework agreements nearing expiration, ensuring that necessary updates, such as changes to official duty stations, are made promptly and in accordance with established procedures.

The OIG recommends that the Executive Director for Operations develop procedures to mitigate the risk of inaccurate locality pay resulting from employees not reporting to their official duty station as required by the terms of their telework agreements.

The Chief, Taxpayer Services, should develop a code that can be placed on tax accounts during tax return
************2*************************** processing to identify when a on the current year Form 5695.

The Chief, Taxpayer Services, should identify and update computer programming which prevented tax returns incorrectly claiming the Residential Clean Energy Credit from being identified by the Error Resolution program.

The Chief, Taxpayer Services, should evaluate and update computer programming to disallow the credit for qualified fuel cell property when taxpayers do not meet the minimum kilowatt usage requirement.

The Chief, Taxpayer Services, should review the 1,537 tax returns we identified that did not meet the kilowatt requirement or had a miscalculated credit and take action to recover the potential erroneously issued credit amounts.

The Chief, Taxpayer Services, should take steps to periodically identify and recover erroneously issued credits until computer programming can be implemented to correct the identified issues.

The Chief Tax Compliance Officer, should incorporate the use of the code developed in response to Recommendation 1 when selecting tax returns for post-processing compliance to verify the **********2*****************

The Chief, Taxpayer Services, should develop processes to enforce and systemically verify that e-filed tax
******2******** returns claiming the Alternative Fuel Vehicle Refueling Property Credit have
***********2*********************** used to claim the credit.

The Chief, Taxpayer Services, should revise Form 8911 to capture the number of properties claimed for the Alternative Fuel Vehicle Refueling Property Credit.

The Chief, Taxpayer Services, should develop computer programming to limit the personal use part of the credit
***********2***********

The Chief, Taxpayer Services, should develop computer programming to systemically ensure that e-filed returns claiming a qualified disaster distribution that is exempt from the early distribution tax do not exceed the $22,000 statutory limitation.

The Chief, Taxpayer Services, should review the 39 tax returns that we identified exceeding the statutory limit for the early distribution tax and take appropriate action to correct them.

Incorporate all business-essential processes and related interfaces, as defined by product owners, during validation sessions, user acceptance testing, or equivalent procedures to accurately present system capability.

Enhance the test plan to incorporate a more robust, risk-based testing process that incorporates user-testing requirements for functional and nonfunctional business-essential processes related to interfaces.

Develop a process to confirm with affected administrative offices whether they are aware of needed changes to test environments and that they have sufficiently executed them before interface test events.