Smartphones and apps have made it easier for people to find work through new online marketplaces, such as ride sharing or meal delivery. But these “platform” or “gig” workers may not understand all of the tax obligations of their new job. For example, companies may classify them as independent contractors instead of employees, and they may not know to make estimated quarterly tax payments...

IRS offers a range of online services, including services that allow taxpayers to track refunds or view their accounts. Although IRS recognizes that taxpayers want more online options, it hasn’t considered taxpayer input in developing new services. Also, its efforts to determine whether current online services meet taxpayer needs haven’t yet been sufficient to make decisions about how to move...

U.S. firms that earn income from foreign activities or foreign subsidiaries are subject to taxes at home and abroad. Double taxation may occur when two or more countries with different tax approaches levy taxes on the same income. The IRS' U.S. Competent Authority (USCA) helps U.S. multinationals resolve disputes over double taxation with foreign authorities and the IRS. However, taxpayers may ha...

Facing declining budgets and aging information technology, in 2014 IRS officials began envisioning new approaches for interacting with taxpayers that they called the "Future State." They described the Future State as guiding principles—rather than a specific plan—to transform IRS. This vision included giving taxpayers more web-based options for communicating with IRS and dealing with taxes. F...

Taxpayers don’t have to go to court to appeal IRS decisions such as tax bills. They have the option of bringing their cases to IRS’s Office of Appeals. Its mission is to resolve disputes in a timely manner that is fair to the government and taxpayer. Among other things, we found: information on the length of the appeals process was not readily available, making it hard for taxpayers to know w...

The Return Review Program is one of IRS's key systems for detecting tax fraud and preventing bad refunds—preventing about $4.4 billion in bad refunds during the 2017 filing season. IRS monitors the program's performance and adjusts it to address new threats, but we found ways to improve and expand use of the program. For example, we recommended ways to increase the amount of data available to...

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 (see table below). In addition, the five selected investments in the operations and maint...

Timely reporting of employee wage and tax information helps authorities detect tax fraud, enforce tax laws, compute Social Security benefits, and combat identity theft. Congress moved up the deadline for all employers to report this information—including federal employers. Federal agencies generally use four shared service centers to process and transmit their employees' tax information to stat...

According to IRS estimates, taxpayers collectively pay a bit more than 80% of the taxes they owe. This difference between the taxes people and businesses owe and what they pay on time is known as the tax gap, which IRS estimated to be $458 billion, on average, for 2008-2010. IRS used to set specific, numeric goals for improving taxpayer compliance, but has moved away from that approach. Officials...

The IRS uses its National Research Program to study tax compliance issues. The program recently completed a study on employment tax returns filed between 2008 and 2010, but the IRS has not made plans to analyze the results of this study. We looked at the study results and found that noncompliance in reporting taxable wages most frequently involved how workers were classified (and whether employer...