FY 2013 Objectives Report to Congress
National Taxpayer Advocate (NTA) Nina E. Olson released her Fiscal Year 2013 Objectives Report to Congress on June 27, 2012, which identifies the priority issues and challenges for the upcoming fiscal year. The report expresses particular concern about the taxpayer impact of expired and expiring tax provisions, the rise in tax fraud and tax-related identity theft, and attempts to limit the NTA’s formal input on issues that affect taxpayer rights and taxpayer burden.
Report Highlights
Objectives Report to Congress Additional Facts
- Sixty tax provisions expired by the end of 2011 – some of which may be extended retroactively before the end of 2012 – and 41 more are scheduled to expire during 2012.
- Since 2001, the National Taxpayer Advocate has issued eight Taxpayer Advocate Directives (TADs). She issued four (50 percent) in the last 12 months.
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TAS identity theft receipts rose 93 percent in fiscal year (FY) 2011 over FY 2010. The upward trend continued in the first two quarters of FY 2012, when TAS received nearly 16,000 identity theft cases, a 57 percent increase over the same period in FY 2011.
- The Taxpayer Protection Unit, one of the IRS’s specialized identity theft units, has been unable to answer about two out of every three calls from taxpayers so far this year. At times during the filing season, it was answering only about one out of every nine calls it received – and those who managed to get through waited an average of over an hour to speak with an employee.
- Between FY 2000 and FY 2011 face-to-face audits of individuals rose by 56 percent (from 251,108 to 391,621), but correspondence exams increased by 220 percent (from 366,657 to 1,173,069).
- Forty-six percent of all correspondence exams in FY 2011 (536,174 out of 1,173,069) covered the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC).
