IRS Modernization – Preparing Clients

Internal Revenue Service (IRS) procedures seem to be outdated due to a lack of technology. On a good day, one can call the IRS and only wait on hold for an hour or two before speaking to an agent who may request a form be faxed. A tax professional may have spent half their workday by the time the situation is resolved or a plan of action has been established. It is no secret the IRS has had many setbacks the past 10 years including budget cuts, employment drops and workload increases. The budget declined by 17% from 2010 to 2018. Full-time equivalent employees dropped 36% from 1989 to 2018, with the number of returns filed annually steadily rising for the past 20 years, going from 130.97 million in 2001 to 169.1 million in 2020 (Tax Policy Center, 2020). Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic created a major backlog, leaving 21.3 million unprocessed paper returns at the end of May 2022.