You have questions. Maybe it's about which box to report a Form 1099-MISC payment or whether a payment is Form 1042-S reportable. You call the IRS and can't get an answer. According to a recent report issued by the National Taxpayer Advocate this is the new normal.

On January 10, 2018 the National Taxpayer Advocate issued it's annual report to Congress regarding the state of the IRS. The report does not mince words. According to the National Taxpayer Advocate's Nina Olson if you call the IRS your odds are slim in terms of getting the answers you need for your Form 1099/1042-S related questions.

Olson reports that, beginning in 2014, the IRS sharply curtailed the scope of tax-law questions it answers. It now answers only “basic” questions during the filing season, and it does not answer any tax-law questions after the April 15 filing deadline.  In addition, Olson reports that there has been a significant reduction in the training budget for the employees who remain. To wit, she states that "Since FY 2009, the IRS’s employee training budget has been cut by nearly 75 percent."

What does this mean for you? It means that if you have a 1099/1042-S filing or compliance question it is more likely than not that the IRS will not answer you call or get to your question. Moreover, if you are lucky enough to reach an IRS customer service representative the odds they will be able to effectively answer your question or roughly the same as flipping a coin. Furthermore, this answer will not be given in writing. This means that if your reporting decisions end up resulting in a B-Notice, Penalty Notice, or Audit that you will not have the documentation to show reasonable cause for having any penalties or fines waived or reduced.

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