Tax Administration: More Improvement Needed in IRS Correspondence (Letter
Report, 06/01/94, GAO/GGD-94-118).

During the past 6 years, GAO, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and
others have cited delayed, inaccurate, incomplete, and confusing
responses to taxpayer letters as chronic IRS problems. Although IRS has
made progress in correcting its correspondence problems by adopting
quality and timeliness standards and by expanding quality reviews of
outgoing mail, some problems persist. A GAO review of nearly 1,900
closed correspondence cases in IRS' Atlanta and Cincinnati service
centers found that 15 percent of the cases were incorrect, unclear,
incomplete, or nonresponsive. Also, 11 percent of the cases resulted
from taxpayers repeatedly trying to contact IRS to resolve a matter.
Problems such as these increase IRS' costs, frustrate taxpayers, and
ultimately discourage taxpayer compliance with the tax laws. GAO
outlines several opportunities for IRS to improve its responsiveness to
taxpayers, including resolving more taxpayer issues by telephone,
clarifying the situations that warrant an IRS response to taxpayer
correspondence, making timeliness indicators more useful, and improving
interim letters.

--------------------------- Indexing Terms -----------------------------

 REPORTNUM:  GGD-94-118
     TITLE:  Tax Administration: More Improvement Needed in IRS 
             Correspondence
      DATE:  06/01/94
   SUBJECT:  Tax administration systems
             Computerized information systems
             Information processing operations
             Internal controls
             Taxpayers
             Quality control
             Tax returns
             Human resources utilization
             Communications (messages)
IDENTIFIER:  IRS Automated Inventory Control System
             IRS Professional Letter System
             IRS Correspondex Expert System
             IRS Integrated Case Processing System
             IRS Tax System Modernization Program
             National Performance Review
             TSM
             
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