Open Recommendations

The Chief, Appeals, should establish a process with the appropriate Business Operating Divisions (BOD) to identify, track, and update forms, letters, publications, notices, websites, and social media that still require the new IRS Independent Office of Appeals name.

Establish a documented annual enterprise-wide examination planning process that aligns with the multiyear, comprehensive Examination Strategic Plan.

Develop a tool to consider risk and other relevant variables to inform examination resource allocation decisions, then expand its use to include Examination workstreams from all divisions.

Ensure that the IRS does not burden taxpayers in existing payment agreements when PCA contracts are ending by developing a solution to continue to service taxpayers in active payment arrangements.

On June 15, 2021, we alerted IRS management of our concerns with the systemic calculation of the allowable RRC amount. We recommended that IRS management review the returns we identified and provide us with any corrective actions they intended to take.

The Commissioner, Wage and Investment Division, should ensure that programming is updated to systemically reject electronic submissions of Forms 2848 and 8821 when missing one of the five essential elements (name, address, signature, etc.) without manually mailing a rejection letter.

The Commissioner, Wage and Investment Division, should develop a process to systemically pull all controlled inventory for each Accounts Management site for the Accounts Management Inventory Report (AMIR) to ensure consistency, reduce human error, and increase efficiencies

The Commissioner, Wage and Investment Division, should implement a more centralized and structured approach that includes an assessment of factors including high-volume notices and letters issued to taxpayers to ensure that frequently issued notices and letters as well as those that have significant impact on the taxpayer are translated into Spanish.

The Commissioner, Wage and Investment Division, should establish a process for Limited English Proficiency (LEP) taxpayers to provide feedback on their experience using the Over-the-Phone Interpreter (OPI) service.

The Commissioner, Wage and Investment Division, should establish a customer satisfaction measurement system to assess the overall satisfaction with Over-the-Phone Interpreter (OPI) service.

The Commissioner, Wage and Investment Division, should establish specific performance measures and goals to effectively assess the assistance provided to LEP and visually impaired taxpayers.

The Chief Information Officer should retire older ******************** and migrate to more current ****************** in accordance with the documented migration plan.

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The Commissioner, Wage and Investment Division, should develop processes and procedures to retain and provide access to historical ERS data, including actions taken by tax examiners.

The Deputy Commissioner for Services and Enforcement should continue efforts to close the virtual currency information gap by issuing guidance clarifying the proper information reporting associated with virtual currency transactions.

The Chief Privacy Officer should develop a standard form for all pseudonym requests, approval, registration, and recordkeeping of pseudonym information.

The Chief Privacy Officer should perform a full inventory to develop a complete and accurate list of active pseudonyms.

The Chief Privacy Officer should establish processes to maintain a complete and fully supported list of pseudonyms.

The Chief Privacy Officer should periodically solicit pseudonym holders to determine whether each employee still needs a pseudonym, and advise those that no longer need a pseudonym that they have the option to withdraw from the program.

The Commissioner, Wage and Investment Division, should consider working with its external partners to add retailers in States without a participating location to increase the availability of the payment option

The Commissioner, Wage and Investment Division, should conduct public awareness activities to increase taxpayers’ knowledge of all cash payment options and update internal guidance to reflect the most current information about cash payment options.

The Commissioner, Wage and Investment Division, should develop processes and procedures to ensure that continuous criminal background checks are conducted on all program participants as part of the FBI RAP Back Program. These processes and procedures should include steps to evaluate continued participation in IRS programs for individuals identified with a criminal history.

The Deputy Commissioner for Services and Enforcement should develop Service-wide processes and procedures to ensure that all operating divisions suppress the issuance of nonstatutory notices to taxpayers that have a UD mail indicator on their account; suppress the issuance of correspondence when a taxpayer's address of record is an IRS campus; and research and update taxpayer addresses for which the USPS returns undeliverable mail with a yellow label that provides a more current address.

The Commissioner, Wage and Investment Division, should install and use hygiene software to perfect taxpayer addresses on the Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) RTS system.