United States General Accounting Office GAO February 2000 Report to the Secretary of the Treasury_part6 docx

Management Discussion and Analysis
Page 54 GAO/AIMD-00-76 IRS’ Fiscal Year 1999 Financial Statements
INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE
Management Discussion and Analysis
For the Fiscal Year Ended September 30, 1999
PROGRAMMATIC HIGHLIGHTS
Submission Processing (continued)
the time needed to process the affected returns and issue the refunds. Excluding the
performance of that one center, the FY 1999 performance level was 85%.
In the General Accounting Office (GAO) report “IRS’ 1999 Tax Filing Season, “GAO
recommended that Submission Processing analyze the results of the refund timeliness
tests to determine, among other things, why about 15 percent of the refunds took longer
than 40 days to issue and what the test results showed for returns that were filed error-
free. The Commissioner, in his response letter, said that the IRS is “in the process of
obtaining an extract from which we can perform an initial analysis. We will be able to
tell which returns had a math error, but not those on which we corresponded or on
which there was an unpostable condition. Therefore, we cannot, based on the
extracted data alone, identify whether a return was truly error-free. Depending on our
findings in the initial analysis, we may make a decision to pull the returns and conduct a
more extensive analysis. If we do further analysis, we will be able to determine the
results for returns filed error-free. The results of the initial analysis will be completed on
or before February 1, 2000.” We have included actions to address this recommendation
under the FY 2001 and FY 2000 Service to All Taxpayers goal narratives in the FY 2001
Congressional Justification of the President’s Budget.
The IRS Internet site “The Daily Digital” continues to be extremely popular. During the
January through April 1999 filing season, the site received more than 767 million “hits”
(information accesses) compared to over 300 million for the same period in 1998.
There were 57 million downloaded files in the January to April 1999 period, an increase
of 100% over the 28 million downloaded during the same period of 1998. In FY 1999,
the following applications were provided through the enhanced IRS Internet site to
improve customer service.

On-line Installment Agreement
– Delinquent taxpayers meeting IRS criteria are allowed
to use the web to initiate a payment agreement on overdue taxes. This application was
designed to complete the agreement with secure taxpayer data on the taxpayer’s
personal computer, not on the IRS Internet site. The taxpayer then has the option of
printing, signing and faxing or mailing the completed agreement to the IRS at the
address provided. Taxpayers still have the option of coming to an office to make
agreements but this online option will significantly reduce the walk-in taxpayer service
traffic and telephone time devoted to installment agreements.
Expanded On-Line Customer Service
- Expanded use of online customer service
technologies, such as the “Mailman” application that allows taxpayers to submit
questions to Customer Service Representatives on the Internet site and receive
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