Internal Revenue Service: Interim Results of 2012 Tax Filing Season and Summary of the Fiscal Year 2013 Budget Request

What GAO Found

In summary, so far this filing season, IRS

• experienced an increase in total call volume (mostly for automated calls about taxpayer's refunds), and a reduction in IRS's level of service resulted in wait times of about 17 minutes;

• has processed almost 68 million returns, and electronic filing continues to increase; and

• experienced problems, since resolved, that delayed refunds for about a week for millions of taxpayers, including one that involved a key electronic filing system, Modernized E-File (MeF). As we finished our work in March, IRS provided us with an update to its contingency plan for MeF dated December 2011. Given MeF's importance, the problems it experienced this year, and IRS's plans to turn off its legacy e-file system in October, without timely review and update--as needed--of its contingency plan to take into account the lessons learned from the current filing season, IRS risks not being able to timely and reliably process tax returns.

In addition, the President's fiscal year 2013 budget request shows

• a $944.5 million (8.0 percent) increase over fiscal year 2012, mainly for the Enforcement and Operations Support appropriations. This is an increase of 5.3 percent over fiscal year 2011. The Taxpayer Service appropriation request for 2013 is about the same as last year, and IRS expects to gain savings from more e-filed returns and other efficiencies;

• an increase of about 4,500 full-time equivalents (FTE) (5.0 percent) over fiscal year 2012, primarily for enforcement initiatives;

• about $2.5 billion for IT investments; and

• reduced annual goals for 2012 and 2013 for selected taxpayer service and enforcement activities from 2011.

Why GAO Did This Study

This letter transmits several briefings we provided between March 7 and 19, 2012, as well as subsequent comments from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The briefings were based on our work to date from Congressional requests for an assessment of IRS's 2012 tax filing season performance and a review of the fiscal year 2013 Congressional Budget Justification for IRS.

Our briefing objectives were to (1) provide an interim assessment of IRS's 2012 performance in processing tax returns and refunds and providing telephone service; and (2) describe how IRS plans to manage funding reductions in fiscal year 2012; the fiscal year 2013 budget request for IRS including dollar and staffing trends, new program initiatives, the cost of major information technology (IT) investments; and selected performance measures and goals. To conduct this work, we obtained and analyzed IRS performance data for processing tax returns and refunds and providing telephone service; interviewed IRS officials and representatives from tax preparation and tax software firms on various aspects of filing season performance and challenges faced; reviewed IRS plans to manage budget reductions; compared and analyzed budget documentation for fiscal year 2008 through 2013; reviewed and summarized IRS performance data, annual IRS databooks, and other reports including those from the IRS Oversight Board; and interviewed IRS officials in the offices of the Chief Financial Officer and Corporate Budgeting.