Key areas of the report focus on improving taxpayer services, ensuring that taxpayer rights are protected in the IRS’s private debt collection initiative, and making the IRS’s offer-in-compromise program more accessible for taxpayers who are unable to pay their tax debts in full.
The report also addresses the challenges the IRS is facing because of pressure to close the tax gap quickly. “For fiscal year 2008, both the IRS and the Taxpayer Advocate Service (TAS) face similar challenges,” the NTA wrote. “The IRS is under scrutiny for its efforts to close the tax gap, while TAS is struggling to address taxpayer difficulties that arise as a result of these very efforts.”
The objectives report is one of two reports that the National Taxpayer Advocate is required by statute to submit to the House Committee on Ways and Means and the Senate Committee on Finance each year. The statute requires these reports to be submitted directly to the Committees without any prior review or comment from the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, the Secretary of the Treasury, the IRS Oversight Board, any other officer or employee of the Department of the Treasury, or the Office of Management and Budget.
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- Taxpayer Advocate :: 2008 Objectives Report to Congress
