IRS Should Ease Tax-Burden During Recessions
January 7th, 2009 at 1:45 pm - by admin
The National Taxpayer Advocate group’s representative, Nina Olson, said today that the Internal Revenue Service - or, the ‘tax man’ - should ease the burden on taxpayers explicitly hit by recession.
“Current IRS guidance provides little direction to help IRS employees identify taxpayers who are experiencing economic hardship and prevent undue economic burden,” said Nina Olson.
Olson, responsible for an annual report to Congress on behalf of taxpayers - appointed by the Treasury to represent taxpayer interests - suggested that it may be essential to economic recovery for tax collectors to consider economic impacts before initiating collection actions.
Yesterday, the IRS released a fact-sheet detailing ways they may attempt to assist burdened taxpayers - or non-taxpayers, as it goes - saying that collective efforts, penalties, and timelines for missed payments may be adjusted if employees determine the taxpayers to have been negatively effected by an economic crisis. Furthermore, the IRS said that debt forgiven for foreclosed homes would not be taxed - an unprecedented move.
The Service also stated that they may readjust the formulations used to calculate liabilities on home equity credit, “with the uncertainty in the housing market, the IRS recognizes that the real-estate valuations used to assess ability to pay may not be accurate, so in instances where the accuracy of local real-estate valuations is in question or other unusual hardships exist, the IRS is creating a new second review of the information.”
March 21, 2009 at 4:59 PM
Sure Ms. Olson has talked about the IRS’s shortcomings, ruffled a few feathers, and wrote some tough reports. Unfortunately, Ms. Olson has not been able to get very much accomplished in her seven years on the job other then create a high employee turnover rate. She tried to simplify the tax code by creating a standard definition of a child. When all was said and done, she only made matters worse. So much worse, the law had to be amended.
Ms. Olson also destroyed the very program in the IRS that was set up to assist taxpayers. Before Ms. Olson, if you needed help with a tax problem that was not dealt with satisfactorily through normal channels the IRS would transfer your case over to a group that had the experience in your particular issue and the authority to fix your problem on the spot. Ms. Olson has forsaken this logic. Now if you need help and your case is transferred over to her program it will most likely be assigned to someone that is not experienced or even properly trained to assist you. Moreover, even if the employee understands your situation they will not be able to fix it. They will have to turn around and request the IRS to fix it. Not only is this a poor way to assist taxpayers it also costs taxpayers more money.
The Taxpayer Advocate’s office has an important role of advocating for all taxpayers. While Ms. Olson does an adequate job of this, she does not advocate very well for the individual taxpayer who comes into her office for assistance. For that reason, her employees that work with taxpayers should be reassigned back to the IRS where they will be better trained and better able to quickly assist taxpayers in their moment of need.