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Project Statement:

CP 30 Estimated Tax Penalty Notice-Refund Reduced

Goal Statement:

The goal of this project is to review and make recommendations to the IRS that will enhance customer service and improve the taxpayers’ experience. Letters and Notices are sometimes hard to understand and make it difficult for taxpayers to comply with tax law.

Project Statement:

It is important for the taxpayers to have access to the most current and accurate information regarding their tax responsibilities. Improving the access to information in the IRS website, will result in better rates of compliance, the taxpayers will have a better understanding of their tax responsibilities and it will minimize the discontent of some taxpayers with the IRS.

Goal Statement:

The goal of this project is to improve the availability and accessibility of the services the taxpayers receive via the chatbot. This will lead to an expansion of the topics available and will facilitate the access to information thru self-help tools.

Project Statement:

The Toll Free Phone Lines Committee members were asked to test and provide feedback regarding the voice bots for the Where’s My Refund (WMR) and Where’s My Amended Return (WMAR) systems

Goal Statement:

To improve the taxpayer experience with the WMR and WMAR systems by providing observations, feedback and recommendations for possible future enhancements to the voice bots for these systems. Specifically, the IRS requested testing the voice bots for clarity, accuracy, relevance and completeness.

Project Statement:

Letters and Notices are tax account related, public-use correspondence created because of an account related activity or condition. Determine if the CP312 and CP313, clearly communicates appropriate guidance to the public.

Goal Statement:

The goal of this project is to review and make recommendations to the IRS that will enhance customer service and improve the taxpayers’ experience. Letters and Notices are sometimes hard to understand and make it difficult for taxpayers to comply with tax law.

Project Statement:

Taxpayers have raised concerns that documents submitted through the Document Upload Tool are not being addressed by the IRS in a timely manner.

In many cases taxpayers are left wondering if the IRS have received the documents through the DUT or what type of progress if any the IRS has made on the documents that they have sent in using the DUT. This causes a significant number of phone calls from both taxpayers and tax practitioners to the IRS to check up on the status of these documents.

Goal Statement:

To reduce the amount of calls the taxpayers are making to the IRS by giving them meaningful status updates of the documents that were sent to the IRS via the Document Upload Tool.

Project Statement:

Evaluation of Form 8821 and instructions to determine if the form and instructions clearly communicate appropriate guidance to the public.

Goal Statement:

TAP’s assistance is requested in educating taxpayers on the need to review who they have designated to receive and inspect their tax information and to revoke the authorizations when it is no longer needed. Focusing on this communication will improve tax compliance and protect taxpayer information.

Project Statement:

Tax professionals.

Goal Statement:

The Office of Online Services (OLS) previously engaged with TAP on the topic of taxpayer requested data, focusing specifically on taxpayers’ struggles with interpretation of the IRS’s tax account transcript. As a follow-up to the incredibly valuable feedback TAP provided about taxpayers’ perspectives, our team would also like to ensure that we are considering the perspective of tax professionals as we consider updates to make to improve the readability and understandability of the transcript. For example, a non-expert taxpayer likely does not understand what the transaction codes mean, or what “cycle” refers to, or why some transactions show values of $0 – but are those transcript elements valuable to tax professionals? If yes, how might the IRS better accommodate the disparity in expertise between taxpayers and tax professionals in its transcript products? We want to ensure that any updates we make will meet the needs of all potential users (or find a suitable compromise), rather than serving the needs of one group (e.g., taxpayers) at the expense of another (e.g., tax professionals).

Project Statement:

There are numerous ways in which a taxpayer or tax professional can communicate with the IRS to get answers to questions or resolve issues, including phone, chat bot, live chat, secure messaging, and in-person appointments. However, those communication channels don’t exist as a unified, holistic communication system, but rather as independent, unintegrated channels, with inconsistent availability from one topic area to the next (e.g., secure messaging use is inconsistent between business units; chat is available from some pages in IRS.gov but not others; etc.). We are planning an overhaul of our communication system to make it user- and issue-centered, creating a better experience for users. To do that, we need to collect feedback from taxpayers and tax professionals about their experiences contacting the IRS: What’s working well? What isn’t? How could we better serve users’ communication needs?

Goal Statement:

An ideal outcome would be answers to the following questions: • Other than phone wait times, what are the biggest pain points for taxpayers and tax professionals trying to communicate with the IRS? What problems are most important for the IRS to tackle? • Focusing on digital communication: What are specific examples of challenges of using the IRS’s current chat bot, live chat, and secure messaging systems? How do our communication channels compare with those of other businesses or organizations? What could the IRS be doing better? • Why might users elect not to use the IRS’s digital communication channels (e.g., privacy: What are users concerned about?)? • What communication with the IRS do taxpayers and tax professionals wish they could do digitally that they currently cannot? Why? • What communication with the IRS do taxpayers and tax professionals wish they could do digitally that they currently cannot? Why?What communication with the IRS do taxpayers and tax professionals wish they could do digitally that they currently cannot? Why?

Project Statement:

Evaluation of Form 8962 instructions and Publication 974 to determine if the form and instructions clearly communicate appropriate guidance to the public.

Goal Statement:

The goal of this project is to review and make recommendations to the IRS that will enhance customer service and improve the taxpayers’ experience. The goal of the Tax Forms and Publications Committee (TF&P) is to promote greater efficiency in the communication and implementation of tax laws. The suggested changes will lead to better and more understandable communication between taxpayers and the IRS and promote a better relationship with taxpayers.