Open Recommendations

The Director, Submission Processing, should coordinate with other Taxpayer Service functions, such as Field Assistance, Accounts Management, and FMSS to include a requirement to identify on Form 3210 any forms received with misrouted remittances.

The Director, Submission Processing, should coordinate with Field Assistance, Accounts Management, and FMSS to create an annual MOU, agree on appropriate staffing, and clearly establish roles and responsibilities when 1) misrouted mail is received and 2) misrouted mail is to be sent to a local TAC for processing rather than a specific Submission Processing Center.

The Director, Submission Processing, should include instructions in the Annual Lockbox Filing Season Readiness Plan to conduct readiness checks or inspections of IRS mailrooms closest to the Lockbox sites. Ensure the sites are staffed and have current instructions specific to processing misrouted Lockbox mail.

The Director, Submission Processing, should implement policies or procedures requiring mailroom staff, or persons assigned to work in non-staffed mailrooms, report the volume of misrouted Lockbox mail received to the LPO Section on a weekly basis from the start of the calendar year to the Lockbox site’s specific program completion date.

The Chief Information Officer should require that ABA team approval be obtained to ensure that new system names meet naming standards and authoritative records are formally created in the ABA and used throughout the other IRS inventory systems.

The Chief Information Officer should require a unique system identifier for each new and legacy system in the authoritative inventory be implemented and applied to system records in the other inventory systems.

The Chief Information Officer should conduct an annual reconciliation of the multiple inventory systems to ensure that all systems are using unique system identifiers.

The Chief Information Officer should improve its annual validation process to ensure that all systems with PII and FTI inventory data are consistently designated across the multiple inventory systems, and that system owners are communicating changes to impacted groups.

The Chief, Direct File, should ensure that the total costs of Direct File include the costs from all support functions.

The Chief, Direct File, should determine what caused taxpayers to not receive their prior year AGI from their Individual Online Account and update the computer programming accordingly.

The Chief, Direct File, should notify the 669 taxpayers we identified of their potential eligibility to claim the education credits. The notice should inform them of their potential eligibility and steps for claiming the credits.

The Chief, Direct File, should improve the Direct File chat technology to systemically queue up chats for assistors, based upon the assistor’s experience.

The Chief, Taxpayer Services, should require that additional documentation be provided with all Form 1310 filings.

The Chief, Taxpayer Services, should ensure that consistent guidance is provided to employees regarding how to handle a Form 1310 that has missing or erroneous calendar and tax year information.

In June 2024, we sent an alert to the IRS noting our concern with the denial of the programming request that would enable Accounts Management employees to systemically release refunds associated with surviving spouses. We recommended that the Chief, Taxpayer Services coordinate with the appropriate IRS offices and senior officials to expedite the approval, funding, and implementation of the programming request

The Chief, Taxpayer Services, should ensure that the decedent refund programming request has appropriate controls to systemically calculate the accurate interest owed to survivors or claimants and avoid overpaying and underpaying interest on the refunds.

The Chief, Taxpayer Services, should update internal guidelines to advise Individual Taxpayer Advisory Specialists and Customer Service Representatives to obtain a Form 1310 while assisting taxpayers and electronically route the document to employees assigned to the case.

The Chief, Taxpayer Services, should develop procedures to upload claimant responses enabling assigned employees to electronically access supporting documentation for decedent refund cases.

The Chief Procurement Officer should develop and implement, in collaboration with the Chief Information Officer, a process that includes educating and training stakeholders to track contracts by legacy system.

The Chief Information Officer should identify and correct the authorized funding source for all information technology contracts that inappropriately used IRA BSM funding for O&M costs of legacy systems.

The Chief Information Officer should develop and implement, in collaboration with the Chief Procurement Officer, a process that includes educating and training stakeholders to ensure compliance with the IRA prohibiting the use of BSM funds for the O&M of legacy systems.

The Chief Procurement Officer should develop a quality review process to ensure that all final pre-award documentation is maintained in the Procurement System and meets quality standards prior to awarding the contract.

The Chief Procurement Officer should develop a quality review process to ensure that post-award documentation is stored in the Procurement System and meets quality standards prior to authorizing payment of vendor invoices.

The Chief, Tax Compliance Officer, should review the 1,130 tax returns with potentially erroneous clean vehicle tax credits and assess the additional tax owed, if any.

As of May 2024, our analysis identified 225 individual taxpayers who had their tax returns incorrectly rejected for Tax Year 2023. The IRS incorrectly rejected tax returns when the taxpayer claimed the Previously Owned Clean Vehicles Credit on the Form 1040, U.S. Individual Income Tax Return, Schedule 3, Additional Credits and Payments, and attached the Form 8936. This occurred because the business rule was looking for the Form 8936 to be attached to the specific line claiming the credit instead of attached to the tax return.