Tax Administration: 2007 Filing Season Continues Trend of Improvement, but Opportunities to Reduce Costs and Increase Tax Compliance Should be Evaluated

摘要

In 2007, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) will spend over $3 billion to process returns and provide taxpayer service. Effective service can reduce taxpayers' burden of complying with tax laws and, many tax experts believe, may improve compliance. GAO was asked to assess IRS's performance relative to 2007 goals and prior years' performance including identifying actions that might generate efficiencies and increase compliance. GAO analyzed IRS performance data, reviewed IRS operations at various locations, and interviewed IRS and paid preparer representatives. IRS improved most filing season services during 2007, continuing a longer-term trend. Tax return processing exceeded last year's performance by most measures. Electronic filing grew at a faster rate than IRS anticipated and continued to generate savings. Access to IRS telephone assistors was comparable to last year, and the accuracy of responses to questions remained at about 90 percent. The performance of IRS's Web site improved in several measures, such as customer satisfaction. Continuing past trends, more taxpayers used volunteer sites, which are less costly than IRS's walk-in sites. Despite these improvements, IRS could reduce the number of paper tax returns processed and also transcribe all lines from the residual paper returns, making that data more available for enforcement. Two options for reducing paper processing are electronic filing mandates, previously suggested by GAO, and bar coding, which could be required for paper returns prepared on computers and reduces processing costs.