IRS continues to expand taxpayer services and online tools, key milestones reached with Inflation Reduction Act funding

IR-2024-196, July 25, 2024

WASHINGTON — As part of ongoing transformation efforts, the Internal Revenue Service announced today continued progress on a variety of taxpayer service and technology projects using Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) funding that expand online tools and digital services.

The IRS highlighted improvements, including six new features to help taxpayers using the Individual Online Account, a new Spanish version of the Business Tax Account tool and the availability of amended business forms that can be filed electronically. In addition, the IRS announced hitting the milestone of 1 million submissions through the Document Upload Tool and more special Community Assistance Visits to help taxpayers in underserved parts of the country.

“Funding from the Inflation Reduction Act is helping spur innovation and improvement across the IRS to transform our operations in our work to help taxpayers and the nation,” said IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel. “This progress can be seen in our continued expansion of our online accounts to provide more features, increased use of new digital tools and additional special activities to help taxpayers in-person. By providing digital forms, making payments easier and continuing work to reduce paper-based processes that have long hampered the IRS and frustrated taxpayers, our progress is accelerating to make long-overdue improvements.”

Werfel highlighted these efforts as part of a quarterly update on the IRS Strategic Operating Plan, the transformational effort using IRA funding. As these initiatives continue to improve taxpayer service and expand online tools, the agency is also working to modernize its core technology infrastructure and compliance efforts focused on neglected problem areas involving high-income taxpayers, partnerships and corporations.

New features, key milestones reached on online, digital products

Taxpayers deserve the same functionality in their online accounts that they experience with their bank or other financial institutions. As detailed in the Strategic Operating Plan, the IRS is working to transform its operations to enable a future in which all taxpayers can meet their responsibilities, including interactions with the IRS, in a digital manner if they prefer. As part of this vision, taxpayers will be able to securely file all documents and respond to all notices online as well as securely access and download their data and account history. The IRS has hit or is progressing toward several milestones toward these goals, including:

The IRS continues to expand the functionality of its online platforms, including several new features in Individual Online Account that give taxpayers the ability to:
- Retrieve all their tax related information from one source, including Wage & Income Account, Record of Account and Return transcripts;
- Request an update to their Identity Protection (IP) PIN using their smartphones or tablets;
- View information about the status of their audit at their convenience, instead of having to call the IRS to obtain audit information;
- Use a Lien Payoff Calculator to access lien information, calculate their lien payoff amount and generate a letter for download/print;
- Complete the Pending Installment Agreement process within Online Account without having to be re-routed to a separate application and
- View a comprehensive overview of their account information, including the status of their tax refund as it’s being processed.
With the latest expansion, Business Tax Account is now available in Spanish. In addition, eligible business taxpayers can see their balance due and make the payment all in one place. Previously, the balance due had to be viewed in a separate place from where the payment was made, adding another complicating step for businesses making payments. Sole proprietors can now download business entity transcripts from their Business Tax Account. This transcript shows entity information like business name, address, location address and more for the Employer Identification Number on file.
File new amended returns electronically: Additional business Forms 940, 941, 943 and 945, including the Spanish version of Forms 941 and 943, can now be filed electronically. Through this improved process, IRS employees can now access taxpayer return information electronically, allowing them to provide more complete and accurate answers to taxpayer questions. In addition, the IRS can now accept related electronic payments while minimizing errors normally associated with processing paper returns. Taxpayers can still choose to submit a paper version.
Respond to notices online hits 1 million uploads: IRS digitalization efforts reached another key milestone in the agency’s transformation work with the Document Upload Tool accepting its one millionth taxpayer submission. Initially launched in 2021 in a limited format and greatly expanded in 2023 with funding from IRA, the tool offers taxpayers and tax professionals the option to respond digitally to eligible IRS notices by securely uploading required documents online through IRS.gov. For anyone with a smart phone or computer, this means that replying to IRS notices is now often as easy as scanning required documents and uploading them to the tax agency.
Use mobile-adaptive forms: IRS now has a total of 30 forms available for mobile use, allowing taxpayers to fill out common non-tax forms on cell phones and tablet devices and then submit them to the IRS digitally. Taxpayers have submitted more than 72,000 mobile-friendly forms since the September 2023 launch. Providing taxpayers with common forms in this new format offers them a safe and fast way to electronically engage with the IRS. This can also help reduce mail and paper when they send forms to the IRS, a part of the paperless processing initiative. Forms adapt to any screen size and ensure information is entered into all required data fields. This can help reduce errors, which can delay processing. In addition, taxpayers can access five of these forms that require signatures in their Online Account, including:
- Form 13533, VITA/TCE Partner Sponsor Agreement
- Form 13533-A, FSA Remote Sponsor Agreement
- Form 14039-B, Business Identity Theft Affidavit
- Form 12508, Questionnaire for Non-Requesting Spouse
- Form 14157-A, Tax Return Preparer Fraud or Misconduct Affidavit

Redesigning notices: The IRS has redesigned 100 of the most common notices that individual taxpayers receive, part of the ongoing work to prepare for the 2025 filing season as part of the Simple Notice Initiative. These notices make up about 90% of total notice volume sent to individual taxpayers, representing about 150 million notices sent to individual taxpayers in 2022.

More in-person help offered; special programs offered in underserved areas

The IRS continues to focus on helping taxpayers get it right the first time, helping them to interact with the agency in the ways that work best for them on the phone, in-person and online. The IRS is expanding in-person service, particularly those in underserved and rural communities.

During the filing season, IRS Taxpayer Assistance Centers had a 37% increase in face-to-face contacts, with the IRS working with nearly 1.3 million taxpayers for this calendar year through July 13. The IRS also received 2.7 million volunteer prepared returns to date compared to 2.5 million last year, an increase of 9.1%.

This summer, the IRS is continuing its special series of Community Assistance Visits to give taxpayers living in areas far from the agency’s in-person offices an opportunity to meet face-to-face with IRS customer service representatives. These visits, which began last year with IRA funding, provide help for taxpayers who live about a two-hour drive away from an IRS office.

The IRS has already hosted events in Roma, Texas; Humboldt, Iowa; Hazlehurst, Georgia; and Orocovis, Puerto Rico. This week, the agency is offering face-to-face help at a temporary Taxpayer Assistance Center in Gallup, New Mexico. Upcoming Community Assistance Visits include:

Aug. 5-9, Thomasville, Alabama
Aug. 19-23, Abilene, Kansas
Sept. 9-13, West Plains, Missouri
Sept. 23-27, Clarkston, Washington
Oct. 7-11, Fairbanks, Alaska
Oct. 21-25, Potsdam, New York

More information on these events will be available on IRS.gov closer to the event date.

Modernizing foundational technology

In addition to improvements to customer-facing technology, the IRS is modernizing decades-old systems and equipment:

Digitalization: The IRS continues to make significant progress scanning and electronically filing paper returns. The IRS has replaced scanning equipment that is older than five years and installed automated mail-sorter machines in the six highest-volume IRS locations, streamlining the process of mail sorting, opening and scanning. As of the end of June, the IRS had scanned more than 2 million pieces of paper. Digitization has far-reaching implications for how the IRS can improve service and will enable the IRS to create completely digital workflows.
Online Account payment plans. The IRS recently delivered a data service that improves the taxpayer experience through Individual Online Account, allowing tax professionals to access and create payment plans on behalf of individual taxpayers.

Beyond the improvements made in direct support of taxpayers, foundational technology has continued the incremental improvements needed to increase operational effectiveness and efficiency for IRS employees, which ultimately helps taxpayers:

Updating outdated Human Resource IT systems. Due to more than a decade of funding cuts to the agency, the IRS has hundreds of disparate, legacy human resources (HR) information technology (IT) systems with thousands of workflows. The transformation and streamlining of the HR IT applications using IRA funding is key to cultivating a robust organization, with a healthy HR function at its core. This multi-year project is a partnership with Treasury’s CIO and leverages cutting-edge technology to modernize IRS’s legacy HR applications, automate manual processes and make use of Treasury’s existing shared service offerings. These HR technology improvements in talent acquisition, workforce planning, labor and employee relations and other key HR processes will enhance the employee experience, improve productivity and help retain a strong and high-quality workforce needed to deliver customer service improvements for taxpayers.
Increasing network bandwidth to help employees, taxpayers. IRS has doubled the network bandwidth at many of our worksites to meet increased workforce demand and improve taxpayer service. The IRS is on track to complete this phase of network expansion at all sites ahead of filing season 2025.

Ensuring complex partnerships, large corporations and high-income, high-wealth individual taxpayers pay taxes owed

The IRS is also continuing work to ensure large corporate, large partnership and high-income individual filers pay the taxes they owe. Prior to the Inflation Reduction Act, more than a decade of budget cuts prevented the IRS from keeping pace with the increasingly complicated set of tools that the wealthiest taxpayers use to hide their income and evade paying their share. The IRS is now taking a variety of steps to close this gap.

The IRS has ramped up efforts to pursue high-income, high-wealth individuals who have either not filed their taxes or failed to pay recognized tax debt, with dozens of revenue officers focused on these high-end collection cases. These efforts are concentrated among taxpayers with more than $1 million in income and more than $250,000 in recognized tax debt. Earlier this month, the IRS announced that it has collected more than $1 billion from high-wealth taxpayers as part of an effort to ensure these individuals pay what they owe. The $1 billion collected represents collections as of April 2024, with work continuing in this area.

More improvements planned for 2025 as filing season work intensifies

In addition to these areas mentioned above, the IRS has a number of initiatives where changes related to the Inflation Reduction Act will accelerate later this year and into the 2025 filing season. Here are some examples:

Continuing to focus on enhancing live assistance through improved efficiency in call centers, reducing paper and continued expanded staffing levels at Taxpayer Assistance Centers, while working to ensure taxpayers are aware of all available credits and benefits.
Expanding online services by expanding the features available in Online Account, including digital copies of notices, status updates, secure two-way messaging and expanded payment options.
Accelerating digitalization by providing new non-tax forms in digital mobile-friendly formats, in addition to the 20 delivered in fiscal year 2024, as well as scanning at the point of entry virtually all paper-filed tax and information returns.
Increased taxpayer information by expanding information available on important issues ranging from the availability of important tax credits and benefits, as well as more consumer-focused information raising awareness about emerging tax scams and schemes.