The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is in the midst of a long-term campaign to modernize its operations to better service taxpayers, and the agency’s acting chief information officer (CIO) laid out three main priorities in that effort on Sept. 21 during an event organized by FCW.
“One of the biggest things we’re focused on right now is the modernization of our call centers, making it easier for people to contact the IRS and get the help that they need quickly,” said IRS Acting CIO Kaschit Pandya.
“The IRS operates one of the largest call centers in the world,” the CIO said. “One of the best services we’ve been able to provide for our taxpayers, from a call perspective, is adding a customer callback feature. This is a feature that I think many of us have now become accustomed to in our private lives, calling into whether it’s a financial institution or utility service,” he said.
The second area that the IRS is focused on is digitizing paper and paper-based processes.
“We are heavily focused on becoming a paperless organization through digital transformation. The IRS recently announced a paperless processing initiative that will eliminate millions of pieces of paper annually,” stated Pandya.
That initiative, announced on Aug. 23, says taxpayers will have the option to go paperless for IRS correspondence by the 2024 filing season, with additional digital enhancements by the 2025 filing season. The IRS Paperless Processing Initiative is aimed at eliminating up to 200 million pieces of paper annually.
“Thanks to the additional resources from the Inflation Reduction Act, taxpayers can now respond to more notices online. We’ve also made significant progress in adopting new technologies that automate the scanning of paper returns,” stated Pandya.
The third area that the IRS is looking to prioritize in its modernization efforts is to invigorate its online accounts and self-help services that taxpayers use to file documents with the agency.
“We believe strongly that the taxpayers deserve the same functionality in their online account that they experienced with their bank or with their utility service. In the next five years,” the acting CIO said. “Taxpayers will be able to securely file all documents and respond to all notices online and securely access and download their data and account history.”
“We’ve made a lot of progress in this space and all of those spaces, but I’m excited about what additional activities we have planned and coming our way,” stated Pandya.
