A congressional subcommittee plans to hold a hearing next Thursday on the 2012 tax return filing season, with one of the main topics to be the recent reports of tax refund delays.
Charles Boustany
IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman will be one of the witnesses at the hearing before the House Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee.
“The Subcommittee looks forward to hearing from Commissioner Shulman about steps being taken by the agency to deliver timely service to American taxpayers during this filing season,” said Charles W. Boustany, Jr., R-La, who chairs the subcommittee, in announcing the hearing. “In addition to a discussion of the current budget request, I am also particularly interested to learn more about how the agency is using its current budget to administer tax enforcement initiatives that protect taxpayer dollars from fraud.”
With the 2012 tax return filing season already well underway, the subcommittee will review IRS performance with a focus on taxpayer service, taxpayer rights, and refund administration.
In conjunction with the review of the current tax return filing season, the subcommittee will review IRS operations in general. Specifically, the subcommittee plans to consider the recently reported delays in tax refunds; fairness in examinations and tax administration; and efforts to prevent fraud, waste, and abuse.
The IRS has experienced problems since early this tax season with refund delays, in some isolated incidents leading to threats against tax preparers (see Tax Preparers Threatened over Tax Refund Delays).
As part of its consideration of IRS operations, the subcommittee will also review the Obama administration’s fiscal year 2013 budget proposal for the IRS of $16.1 billion, an increase of $1.3 billion over the fiscal year 2012 enacted level.
5 Comments
This make the Rapid Refund Program look like a good deal. At least the opportunity costs were lower..
Just like the representative who answer the phone, they could care less about communicating the truth !!!
Posted by: JDAVIS | March 21, 2012 7:24 AM
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One would've thought that the IRS hiring thousands of new agents would speed up the refund process. Apparently they are now just bigger and slower.
Posted by: marcv | March 20, 2012 1:01 PM
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I certainly hope someone takes on the IRS, not for having refunds delayed which all of us in the business knew about, but the underhanded way the IRS hide this information and allowed us, the tax preparer community, to take the bullet for thier problem.
Once again, IRS commissioner, I do NOT wish to be your shield when things go wrong at your office. Stand up and tell the American public you are having problems and do NOT let my phone ring off the hook asking me why my client does NOT have thier refund!!!! djb :~((
Posted by: DJBradach | March 20, 2012 10:25 AM
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Wonder if this is a forum where Nina Olson's Tax Advocacy Directive (TAD) and her report to Congress about abuses of the offshore Voluntary, Disclosure initiatives, FAQ35 'bait and switch' cost and burdens on US Expats will come up? Will any of these questions could be raised? Wonder if Cspan will even bother to cover this?
Posted by: Just Me | March 16, 2012 12:34 PM
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Another committee, another waste of tax dollars and time. We all know that nothing positive will come of this investigation and next year we will have the same or worst problems.
Posted by: benusmc | March 16, 2012 8:01 AM
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