IRS Offers Tax Practitioners Priority Service for Audits

The Internal Revenue Service is now giving tax professionals a priority phone number they can call when their clients are undergoing a Campus Correspondence Examination audit.

The IRS said that tax professionals responding to Campus Correspondence Examination calls and correspondence can access the CCE Practitioner Priority Service, CCE PPS for short, by calling the PPS toll-free number and selecting the Correspondence Examination option. Additional prompts, based on the telephone number on the letter that tax practitioners are calling about, will direct the call to the IRS’s Small Business/Self Employed Examination or Wage & Investment Examination line.

CCE PPS will address up to five clients per call and transfer or refer issues outside the CCE scope to the appropriate IRS functions.

The PPS prioritizes calls to improve tax professionals’ experiences.

The toll-free number for the new service, which debuted April 2, is (866) 860-4259.

For the Small Business/Self-Employed division, the hours are Monday through Friday from 7:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m., local time. For the Wage & Investment division examinations, the hours are Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. – 8:00 p.m., local time. Alaska and Hawaii tax professionals should use Pacific time.

The IRS cautioned on its Web site that the CCE PPS number is for tax professional use only.