The success of the Internal Revenue Service's e-filing program has led to the elimination of several jobs, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported this week.
The IRS will process its last mailed-in Form 1040 and tax check in Philadelphia by September 2007, and the facility will join those on Long Island, N.Y., and in Memphis, Tenn., in being shuttered. Centers in Andover, Mass., and Atlanta are expected to follow and are scheduled for closure in 2009 and 2011, the newspaper reported.
The IRS said that even as it's cutting the old jobs, it's helping workers get new positions in the IRS, another federal agency, or the private sector.
Electronic filing rose to an estimated 74.2 million returns for 2005 taxes, up from 40.2 million for 2000 taxes. Almost 135 million individuals filed taxes for the 2005 season, the paper reported.
Separately, t he Internal Revenue Service has failed in using the mail to collect much of $2.1 billion in federal taxes owed by high-income individuals, an internal audit found, according to published reports.
In testimony before congressional auditors, IRS Research Director Mark Mazur said that new collection efforts hadn't yet increased the compliance rate of businesses and individuals. U.S. taxpayers owe $345 billion a year more than they pay, a noncompliance rate of 16 percent, Mazur said. The rate has remained between 16 percent and 19 percent over the last three decades.
