Last month the National Taxpayer Advocate issued its latest report. For those of you in Accounts Payable, Tax, or who are maybe an independent CPA representing business clients there were several important nuggets of information. The biggest takeaway is that, among other things, the IRS has essentially abdicated its responsibility to provide even a modicum of assistance to 1099 filers struggling to understand the blizzard of changes made in the law over the past few years.

Let's go to the report:

"During fiscal year (FY) 2019, the Advocate’s report says the IRS received approximately 100 million telephone calls, and customer service representatives answered only 29%. In recent years, the agency has scaled back in-person assistance, closing more than 10% of its Taxpayer Assistance Centers, generally requiring taxpayers to schedule appointments in advance, and reducing the number of taxpayers served by nearly half from FY 2015 to FY 2018."

Furthermore, the report also found that:

"A significant number of taxpayers who call the various IRS phone lines hang up either before or after they are placed in a queue for a particular phone line. The IRS refers to these hang-ups as “primary abandonments” (i.e., when the taxpayer hangs up before they are placed in the queue, such as when a call-waiting notification is received just after the start of the call) and “secondary abandonments” (i.e., when the taxpayer hangs up after they are placed in the queue and before they receive any service). In FY 2019, of the approximate 99 million calls to the IRS enterprisewide, about 25 million (about 25 percent) were primary abandonments, and 11 million (about 11 percent) were secondary abandonments."

And this is not just an issue surrounding calls. The National Taxpayer Advocate also found that when requesting IRS assistance in writing:

"The IRS’s Accounts Management function received about 6.9 million pieces of correspondence from taxpayers during FY 2019, including letters responding to proposed adjustments and other notices (our note: like proposed penalty notices). About 52.3 percent of the correspondence in open inventory had not been answered within the IRS’s time frames (generally 45 days)."

And perhaps worst of all, the National Taxpayer Advocate found that IRS training standards have slipped and badly; stating that "the IRS spent $616 per employee on training in FY 2019, down from $1,775 per employee in FY 2010."

Needless to say, this is all a huge deal. It means that if your organization is having trouble with 1099/1042-S filing questions and issues, or 1099/1042-S due diligence issues, or even seeking help trying to figure out how to get a proposed penalty notice waived, or in responding to a B-Notice, or backup withholding, TIN Matching, or any other of a number of 1099 related situations - that you can forget asking the IRS about it.

Of course we are here to help. In fact, for over a decade now we have been providing accurate answers to our subscribers questions (and doing so in writing thus thereby helping our clients establish reasonable cause for their reporting decisions). Don't hesitate to check out our subscription options. See for yourself how we can assist you in performing your Accounts Payable or Tax related job in a much easier fashion than you have otherwise been forced by the IRS to date.