The Internal Revenue Service has made many changes in recent years, improving tax processing systems, increasing electronic filing and payment options, and expanding services available on IRS.gov for taxpayers and tax professionals. But the needs of taxpayers, the tax community and the nation continue to rapidly evolve, and it’s clear the IRS needs to look at the future in a more comprehensive way.
In February of this year, the IRS released a “working draft” of their plans for the future in the following initiatives.
Compliance Risk Management
Establish ongoing activities to assess and anticipate compliance risks for taxpayer segments and develop process for prioritization of identified issues for treatment.
Taxpayer Behavior Analytics
Conduct ongoing analysis of taxpayer behavior to identify problem areas and support development and implementation of behavioral levers to drive higher levels of compliance, self-correction, and use of more efficient channels.
Taxpayer Outreach
Communicate common compliance issues, provide published guidance based on previous taxpayer behavior, increase public awareness of enhanced IRS capabilities, and encourage feedback directly to the IRS and through our stakeholder partners.
Channel Optimization
Optimize service channel processes, technology, and capacity and transition taxpayers to the most efficient and effective service channels to enable the most efficient resolution of inquiries.
Taxpayer Online Account
Expand ability for taxpayers and authorized third parties to securely obtain taxpayer information, make payments, resolve compliance issues, share documentation, and self-correct issues in an individualized, online account.
Data-Centric Processing
Transition paper-based documents (taxpayer facing and internal) to a digital format, including digital options for submitting and modifying relevant forms and data and digitizing case files and employee documentation.
Accelerated Information Documents
Accelerate the collection and processing of taxpayer data from employers, financial institutions, and other third parties to reduce lag time between filing and document matching.
Data Sharing and Analytics
Facilitate and/ or enhance partnerships with government entities to promote timely and secure data sharing. Information would be used to enhance issue identification and identify outreach topics that promote voluntary compliance.
Issue Detection & Classification
Enhance the ability to rapidly detect non-compliance (including non-filers) from a variety of sources and align to the most appropriate treatment stream.
Workload Management
Organize work and integrate new workforce planning to address the greatest non-compliance and continue to realign work portfolio as compliance needs shift.
Exam Optimization
Identify transformational ways to increase the efficiency of resources in exam and use Future State capabilities to focus on high potential cases without sacrificing quality.
Collection Optimization
Optimize collection activities through process, technology, and workforce transformations to resolve collection cases earlier and with more efficient resources (e.g., “next best case”).
Mission Impact and Evaluation
Analyze performance measures on programs affecting employee engagement and develop related strategies to address opportunities identified to support the workforce.
Enterprise Collaboration
Provide access to and promote tools, resources, and information (through knowledge management) to the workforce to support cross-organization collaboration and best use of resources.
Workforce Planning
Identify current workforce capabilities and skill gaps through competency management and help employees achieve requisite skills through their performance management plans.
Enhanced Career Development
Enhance employee development with ongoing, near-term performance feedback and provide transparency and predictability into the requirements and expectations for the spectrum of career tracks through workforce development and training.
Optimize Internal Operations Service Delivery
Further optimize support organizations, including Administrative Pool, Business Systems Planning, Human Capital Office, Research, and Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI).
Consolidate Underutilized Facilities: Reduce the Foot Print
Consolidate nearby buildings with near-term lease expirations to increase usage rates and account for decreasing space requirements.
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