IRS offers tax pros extra help with e-Services this week

The Internal Revenue Service is adding extra staff starting Tuesday to help tax professionals reinstate their e-Services accounts.

In an email to tax professionals Tuesday, the IRS said the additional staff will only be available until Friday. The IRS pointed out that tax professionals who have received a Letter 5903, e-Services Revalidation, need to revalidate their identity. The E-Services registration accounts were suspended for tax pros who received Letter 5903 and failed to revalidate their identities within the required 30-day time period. The IRS is encouraging tax professionals who need to revalidate their identity to do it this week while the extra staff is on hand instead of waiting until they have an emergency and need to access their e-Services accounts right away.

“For a limited time, the e-Services Help Desk will have additional staff available to only assist tax professionals who need to revalidate their identity to have their e-Services registration account reinstated,” said the IRS.

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The extra staffers will be available Tuesday, March 21 through Friday, March 24.

The IRS noted that recipients of the letters need to revalidate their identities even if they’re infrequent users of e-Services or the e-Services tools.

Authorized IRS e-file providers also need to make sure the IRS has their current information by reviewing and updating their IRS e-file application within 30 days of a change that requires access to their e-Services registration accounts.

The IRS issued Letter 5903 to tax pros who have access to sensitive taxpayer data through e-Services and who have accessed their accounts in the past year. The move is part of the IRS’s efforts to beef up security around the self-help tools on IRS.gov, which have suffered some high-profile data breaches in recent tax seasons, and better protect taxpayer and tax professional information. For more information, visit www.irs.gov/eservices.

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Tax season E-filing Technology Identity verification Identity theft protection IRS
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