IRS Warns of Service Disruption Christmas Week

The Internal Revenue Service said its Central Authorization File system, which helps power its Transcript Delivery Service and Disclosure Authorizations systems, will be unavailable from December 26 through January 2.

The system will be unavailable from Wednesday, December 26, at 6:00 am EDT through Wednesday, January 2, at 6:30 am for routine maintenance, the IRS said in an email to tax professionals on Monday. Since the Transcript Delivery Service and Disclosure Authorization systems use the CAF to validate authority to act on behalf of a taxpayer, these systems will also be disabled from December 26 through January 2.

The IRS warned tax professionals to request transcripts through e-Services' Transcript Delivery Service or new Form 2848, Power of Attorney and Declaration of Representative or Form 8821, Tax Information Authorization, through the Disclosure Authorization system, no later than midnight, December 25, or hold their requests until systems are restored on January 2.

If tax professionals need to contact the IRS for help with a client and have an established power of authority on file, tax preparers should be prepared to provide a faxed copy of that authorization. IRS Customer Service Representatives will not have access to the CAF and will have limited research capability during the outage.

New authorizations submitted for this purpose will be forwarded to the CAF for processing. Tax professionals will not need to re-submit them through the Disclosure Authorization function of e-Services.

For any questions, contact the IRS Practitioner Priority Service at (866) 860-4259.

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