In 2014, during a period of budget reductions and aging information technology systems at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), IRS officials began discussing a new longer-term vision of tax administration that came to be known as the IRS Future State. This vision proposed a more interactive relationship between taxpayers and IRS to improve taxpayer service, enforcement, and operations. IRS launche

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has identified over 100 interactions requiring taxpayer authentication based on potential risks to IRS and individuals. IRS authenticates millions of taxpayers each year via telephone, online, in person, and correspondence to ensure that it is interacting with legitimate taxpayers. IRS's estimated costs to authenticate taxpayers vary by channel. IRS has made pro

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) generally improved its customer service during the 2018 filing season compared to prior years and managed multiple return processing challenges. For the third year in a row, IRS improved its telephone service by answering 80 percent of calls seeking live assistance and reducing wait times to about 5 minutes, as of the end of the 2018 filing season. This compares

The Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) Return Review Program (RRP) detects and selects potentially fraudulent returns to prevent the issuance of invalid refunds. According to IRS, RRP uses advanced analytic techniques and various data sources, including prior-year tax returns, to assign multiple scores to individual returns based on characteristics of identity theft and other refund fraud. GAO foun

Generally, employers are required to withhold income taxes on employee pay, but employees can exclude part of their pay from withholding. Currently, the amount of an employee's pay to be excluded from withholding is determined by multiplying the number of withholding allowances an employee claims by a set dollar value. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) guidance directs employees to claim withholding

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has made progress in resolving a number of previously reported control deficiencies. During fiscal year 2017, the agency made improvements in access controls by, for example, restricting unnecessary user access to certain applications and enforcing strong encryption on certain systems. IRS also corrected a previously identified contingency planning weakness for

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has identified over 100 interactions requiring taxpayer authentication based on potential risks to IRS and individuals. IRS authenticates millions of taxpayers each year via telephone, online, in person, and correspondence to ensure that it is interacting with legitimate taxpayers. IRS's estimated costs to authenticate taxpayers vary by channel. IRS has made pro

The performance of the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) selected information technology (IT) investments that GAO reviewed varied. Specifically, the four selected investments in the development phase that GAO reviewed spent less than planned, but most were behind schedule and delivered less scope than planned. In addition, the five selected investments in the operations and maintenance phase that

During its audit of the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) fiscal years 2017 and 2016 financial statements, GAO identified a new control deficiency involving the timely correction and posting of tax transactions to taxpayer accounts that contributed to IRS's continuing material weakness in internal control over unpaid assessments as of September 30, 2017. GAO also identified another new deficiency

IRS continues to confront the ongoing problems of identity theft (IDT) refund fraud. The agency estimates that at least $1.68 billion was paid in IDT refund fraud in 2016. To help address this issue, consistent with GAO's prior reporting, the Protecting Americans from Tax Hikes Act of 2015 advanced the deadline for employers to file W-2s to SSA to January 31 (about 1 to 2 months earlier than in p