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Agency Reviewed
Management Challenges
Any Recommendations
Any Open Recommendations
Reports
Recurring Identification Is Needed to Ensure That Employers Full Pay the Deferred Social Security Tax
The Commissioner, Small Business/Self-Employed Division, should ensure that the 3,231 tax accounts are updated to reflect the correct balance due.
The Commissioner, Small Business/Self-Employed Division, should continue to identify new tax accounts with a Social Security tax deferral at least through Calendar Year 2024 to ensure that all unpaid deferrals are identified for collection as appropriate.
Additional Actions Are Needed to Reduce Accounts Management Function Inventories to Below Pre‑Pandemic Levels
Ensure that all sites understand and begin immediately stamping the ICT received date after correspondence screening is completed, and that individual and business documents are screened with equal importance.
Coordinate with the Information Technology organization to explore adding Taxpayer Relations inventories into the CII, so that all Accounts Management inventory is located in the same inventory management system.
The Commissioner, Wage and Investment Division, should establish time frames for and a process to measure correspondence screening timeliness at each site.
The Commissioner, Wage and Investment Division, should rescind the requirement that only the TEs and the CSRs perform correspondencescreening and encourage all sites to use mail clerks, after providing them with adequate training.
The Commissioner, Wage and Investment Division, should ensure prompt completion of the ICT review to determine if additional scanners will be purchased.
Discontinue correspondence screening via telework and ensure at all sites that screening must be conducted in the same IRS facility where documents are being scanned by the ICT.
Identify and address the cause of Accounts Management function employees incorrectly routing cases to other IRS functions and work with other IRS functions to update their Internal Revenue Manuals to make it clear that incorrectly routed documents should be returned to the originating employee.
We recommended that management take steps to hire as many mail clerks as possible.
The Commissioner, Wage and Investment Division, should establish goals for each of the Accounts Management function’s inventory types and develop a plan for addressing those goals to ensure a timely return to pre-pandemic inventory levels.
The Commissioner, Wage and Investment, should prioritize funding and implementation of automated processing of Forms 1040-X to increase efficiencies and reduce taxpayer burden.
The Commissioner, Wage and Investment Division, should implement temporary solutions for the processing of Forms 1040-X to reduce the backlogs, reduce taxpayer burden, and save IRS resources until an automated solution is implemented.
Coordinate with the Information Technology organization to prevent generating transcripts for manual refunds less than $100 and adjust the frequency that some transcripts are generated to help management get through the inventory more efficiently.
Temporarily relieve employees in the Accounts Management function from having to complete paperwork for barred statutes, so they can focus on eliminating the backlogged inventory and prevent future barred statutes.
Reporting on the Use of Coronavirus Response Funding Could Be Enhanced
The Chief Financial Officer should evaluate the feasibility of expanding the information captured in the IRS’s financial tracking system to include tracking budgeted and dedicated staffing by spend plan requirement area for future sources of supplemental funding.
American Rescue Plan Act: Accuracy of Advance Child Tax Credit Periodic Payments
As detailed previously, we provided the Director, Return Integrity and Compliance Services, Wage and Investment Division, with notifications and files detailing erroneous payments we identified and recommended that the IRS evaluate the discrepancies to identify why the payments were made to prevent additional periodic payments to ineligible taxpayers. In addition, we recommended that the IRS add a stop payment transaction code to taxpayer accounts to prevent them from receiving additional improper advance Child Tax Credit payments.
On August 9, 2021, we notified the Director, Return Integrity and Compliance Services, Wage and Investment Division, of our concerns related to eligible taxpayers who did not receive their advance Child Tax Credit payments. We recommended that the IRS evaluate the discrepancies to identify why periodic payments were not made to eligible taxpayers.
On June 29, 2021, we notified the Director, Return Integrity and Compliance Services, Wage and Investment Division, that the messaging provided on the IRS’s eligibility assistant tool and the presentation of information related to the advance Child Tax Credit payments on IRS.gov may be confusing to taxpayers. For example, the link to “Get Answers on the Advance Child Tax Credit” that is located on the IRS.gov main page takes taxpayers to the Advance Child Tax Credit Payments in 2021 web page; however, the links to get the questions and answers is at the bottom of the screen. We recommended that the IRS consider revising the messaging and presentation of information on its platforms to make it clear for taxpayers.
On January 28, 2022, we notified the Director, Return Integrity and Compliance Services, Wage and Investment Division, that we identified 2.2 million taxpayers who had their direct deposit information updated by the IRS between August 23 and October 5, 2021. We recommended that the IRS conduct an outreach effort to inform taxpayers of the possibility that their advance payments may have been sent to payroll allotment accounts. This outreach effort could include sending a separate letter to the impacted taxpayers.
The Director, Return Integrity and Compliance Services, Wage and Investment Division, should develop and implement processes and procedures to include data validation on incoming files from third-party sources prior to their use.
Delays in Management Actions Contribute to the Continued Tax Processing Center Backlogs
On September 16, 2021, we notified the Director, Submission Processing, Wage and Investment Division, that the IRS needed to identify when to stop coding and editing9 prior year tax returns to prevent having to rework these returns (a situation that occurred during the 2020 Filing Season). For example, the IRS needed to send 822,994 business tax returns back to the Code and Edit function at the beginning of Processing Year 2021 to be re-edited to allow for processing. This occurred because these tax returns, although edited, had not been entered into the IRS’s tax processing system by the end of Processing Year 2020. This resulted in an inefficient use of the IRS’s resources because IRS employees needed to re-edit the tax returns. We recommended that the IRS develop a plan to not only limit the number of returns that would require rework, but also any potential downtime in the Code and Edit function so that resources can be maximized for processing tax returns.
On September 29, 2021, we notified the Director, Submission Processing, Wage and Investment Division, of our observation that paper-filed information returns were being sorted and batched. According to both Tax Processing Centers, a decision had not yet been made regarding if the information return documents will be processed or destroyed. As we reported in September 2021,10 the IRS faced similar decisions during Processing Year 2020 and destroyed approximately 30 million paper-filed information return documents around March 19, 2021, because the documents could no longer be processed through its systems. We recommended that the IRS determine if/when Processing Year 2021 paper-filed information return documents would be processed. As an alternative to destroying these documents, we recommended that management evaluate and consider scanning the information return documents using the Service Center Recognition Image Processing System while forgoing the data validation process.
On September 17, 2021, we notified the Director, Submission Processing, Wage and Investment Division, of our concerns with the processing of a backlog of taxpayer address changes using a first-in/first-out method. As of August 27, 2021, the Ogden Entity function had more than 173,000 address change requests in its ending inventory. In our discussions with Ogden Entity function management, they estimated that due to the backlog of inventory, more than 50 percent of the address change requests the staff were working had already been made by other means, e.g., the filing of a tax return that automatically updates the taxpayer’s address. As such, Entity function employees were needlessly expending resources working address change requests for which the address was already updated. We recommended that the IRS evaluate changing the order in which address changes are worked to a last-in/first-out method.
On October 21, 2021, we notified the Director, Submission Processing, Wage and Investment Division, of our concerns related to the accuracy of information communicated to taxpayers regarding transcript request methods. For example, our review of information posted on IRS.gov found that non-paper-based methods for requesting tax transcripts were not communicated clearly. Whereas, the Form 4506-T, Request for Transcript of Tax Return, and Form 4506, Request for Copy of Tax Return, provide information for automated self-help service tools. We also found that the instructions on the Forms 4506 and 4506-T do not align with the website wording and could cause confusion for taxpayers. We recommended that IRS management update IRS.gov to provide clear communications on available resources. This includes updating the Forms 4506 and 4506-T tip sections to match IRS.gov language and conducting outreach to encourage individual taxpayers to obtain tax transcripts using the various automated methods.
On September 16, 2021, we notified the Director, Submission Processing, Wage and Investment Division, of our concerns about the printing capacity of the new electronic fax (e-fax) equipment in the Error Resolution System functional area, noting that this new equipment can only print about 20,000 to 30,000 pages/month (approximately 240,000/year) whereas, the prior equipment printed roughly 2 million documents per year. In addition, in the three months since Ogden received this new equipment, it has burned out and needed new parts. Although Ogden ordered new multifunctional print devices, those were not to be delivered until January 2022. As a workaround, Ogden used two printers that had a capacity of about 15,000 pages per month. We recommended that the Submission Processing function collaborate with Managed Print Services and the Information Technology organization to identify and expeditiously resolve all instances of printer capacity, break/fix, etc. issues that are causing work stoppages in the Tax Processing Centers.
On December 17, 2021, we notified the Commissioner, Wage and Investment Division, of our concern that the resources assigned to the RAIVS unit were not commensurate between the Kansas City and Ogden Tax Processing Centers. In our discussions, IRS management advised that taxpayer tax transcript requests had been previously transshipped from the Kansas City Tax Processing Center to the Austin Tax Processing Center with the last transshipment of work occurring in October 2021. On January 11, 2022, we notified the Director, Submission Processing, Wage and Investment Division, of the same concern noting that during our December 2021 walkthroughs, Kansas City management stated they have 70 full-time employees in the RAIVS/Income Verification Express Service’s unit. Whereas, Ogden management stated they have 183 full-time employees. As of December 10, 2021, the Kansas City RAIVS unit had over 751,000 unprocessed requests compared to a little more than 145,000 unprocessed requests in the Ogden RAIVS unit. We recommended that the IRS evaluate alternatives to address the volume of RAIVS inventory at the Kansas City Tax Processing Center. This should include an evaluation of the capacity to reallocate staffing at the Kansas City Tax Processing Center to assist the RAIVS unit, and/or realignment of work among the various Tax Processing Centers, i.e., transship inventory from Kansas City to Ogden.
The Commissioner, Wage and Investment Division, should immediately take steps to address the imbalance of Tax Processing Center staffing and inventory to address the continued backlog of transcript requests.
The Commissioner, Wage and Investment Division, should develop a detailed strategy to show how current and future staffing resources, including available surge team members, will be used to address the significant backlog of amended returns in the Submission Processing function’s inventory.
The Commissioner, Wage and Investment, should ensure that the various products and IRS.gov landing pages are updated to reflect acceptable methods for faxing information to the IRS.
The IRS’s Inability to Keep Pace with Non-Corporate Applications for Refund of Net Operating Losses Under the CARES Act Has Cost Taxpayers Millions of Dollars in Additional Interest
Devote additional resources to process the tentative refunds faster and reduce interest payments.
Develop contingency plans, specific to the processing of Forms 1045, so that taxpayers are not adversely affected by a future cessation in operations.
Develop contingency plans, specific to the processing of Forms 1045, so that taxpayers are not adversely affected by a future cessation in operations.
The Commissioner, Small Business/Self-Employed Division, and the Commissioner, Wage and Investment Division, should evaluate and update their compliance strategy associated with the CARES Act to determine if it matches the risks associated with reversing TCJA provisions.
Compliance Efforts Are Needed to Address Refund Claims Reported on Form 1139 That Are Based on the CARES Act Net Operating Loss Carryback Provisions
Track and monitor examination results for the 25 “still open” examinations of Forms 1120 with reported NOL and an associated Form 1139 reported in Figure 4 of this report, excluding Joint Committee Refund cases which currently have specific monitoring requirements in place.
Use the examination results from Recommendation 1 to assess whether to increase the number of examinations of Forms 1120 with reported NOL and an associated Form 1139.
The Commissioner, SB/SE Division should review the examination results and computations of proposed NOL adjustments for the 25 “still open” Form 1120 examinations with associated Forms 1139, as referenced in Figure 4, excluding Joint Committee Refund cases which currently have specific review requirements in place, to determine if the interim guidance regarding NOLs is being properly followed.
Delays Continue to Result in Businesses Not Receiving Pandemic Relief Benefits
On November 22, 2021, we notified the Director, Customer Account Services, Wage and Investment Division, that IRS employees were erroneously suspending Forms 941-X when the amended employment tax return did not include an adjustment to the amount of deferred Social Security tax. We recommended that the Accounts Management function immediately review the Forms 941-X that are identified in the suspense inventory as an adjustment to the amount of deferred Social Security tax to ensure that they are categorized properly.
The Commissioner, Wage and Investment Division, should evaluate the current inventory of backlogged claims related to pandemic relief and develop specific plans to prioritize claims and develop timelines to process backlogged claims.
The Commissioner, Wage and Investment Division, should review the 928 business entities identified that do not appear to qualify as an RSB and take actions needed to recover the ERCs that are determined to be erroneous.
The Commissioner, Small Business/Self-Employed Division, should identify all fourth quarter Tax Year 2021 paper-filed Forms 941 processed prior to when the programming was implemented and identify amended employment tax returns receiving the ERC for which there was no indication that the business was an RSB and take actions needed to recover the ERCs that are determined to be erroneous.
On May 13, 2021, we notified the Director, Examination, Small Business/Self-Employed Division, about the inconsistent referral criteria and recommended that the IRS update referral criteria to include Forms 941-X with refundable credits.
On November 23, 2021, we alerted the Director, Customer Account Services, Wage and Investment Division, that Forms 941-X were not being referred to Examination as required and recommended that the Accounts Management function provide additional guidance to its employees to reinforce established CAT-A referral criteria.
The Commissioner, Wage and Investment Division, should review the 41 Form 941-X claims identified with a nonrefundable COVID-19 related employer credit that meet CAT-A referral criteria and take actions needed to recover credits that are determined to be erroneous.
Provide additional training to employees as it relates to referring Forms 941-X to Examination for review.
Submit a request for the development of a systemic process to identify Form 941-X claims that meet referral criteria and alert the Accounts Management employee when processing these claims of the need to refer the return to Examination.