The Internal Revenue Service has submitted its Taxpayer Assistance Blueprint to Congress, as part of its response to Capitol Hill’s demand for the development of a five-year plan to improve the delivery of taxpayer service. The blueprint contains the joint response of the IRS, the IRS Oversight Board and the National Taxpayer Advocate. The groups all said that the document represents the most extensive IRS research ever conducted into the needs, preferences and behaviors of taxpayers and partners who assist them in complying with the tax laws, such as volunteer and paid tax return preparers.
The plan includes a variety of specific recommendations for improving IRS services for taxpayers and partners -- offering suggestions to expand, simplify, standardize and automate services, and to improve and expand technology infrastructure. It also includes recommendations for increasing education and outreach to taxpayers, partners and IRS employees, and incorporating feedback from those stakeholders into future service decisions.
The Blueprint was designed to:
- Establish a taxpayer and partner baseline of needs, preferences and behaviors;
- Create a transparent process for making service-related resource and operational decisions;
- Develop a framework to improve service delivery; and,
- Define both short-term performance and long-term business goals and metrics to assess service value.
The entire document is available online, at
