The Internal Revenue Service should make several changes in its electronic filing system to address concerns raised by the American Institute of CPAs and others, according to two new reports.
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration issued a report calling for the IRS to put in place a formal process for identifying, reporting and resolving application-processing issues that occur in the e-file system. TIGTA also said the IRS should perfect the validation controls in the system to verify that taxpayers file the correct tax return based on their established filing election.
In the other report, TIGTA initiated an audit in response to concerns raised by AICPA representatives about the lack of an IRS self-help assistance option when an e-filed tax return is rejected. TIGTA recommended that the IRS develop a self-assistance option on IRS.gov that allows customers to obtain detailed explanations of e-file rejection conditions, including the steps to resolve them, and look into providing in the acknowledgement file the information that would allow customers to resolve their rejection conditions once individual tax returns are transitioned to the modernized e-file program.
The IRS, in response, has added a self-assistance option for the 13 most common rejection codes, providing descriptions and suggested solutions. IRS management also plans to study the feasibility of adding a more comprehensive self-assistance option to the Web site.
