Auditor to IRS: Speed it up

The IRS could quicken the pace of its responses to taxpayers, a new government audit has found. The Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration, in a recent report, says that the IRS almost always responds accurately to taxpayer inquiries. But, the audit adds, the agency is not nearly as successful in getting back to taxpayers within its self-imposed 30-day deadline. “Inadequate and untimely responses to taxpayer correspondence adversely affect taxpayers and tax administration,” Russell George, the tax administration inspector general, said in a statement. The audit looked at three separate sets of responses from the IRS, finding them to be accurate at least 80 percent of the time in all three. But the replies were timely only between 10 and 56 percent of the time. The inspector general also found that interim letters, required if a reply cannot be made within 30 days, were not always issued. In all, the audit recommended that the IRS study the interim letter process and clarify instructions for employees, among other things. In its response, the IRS, which received 20 million pieces of correspondence in 2010, quibbled with the how audit compiled its statistics. The agency also noted that it had staffing constraints and defended its use of interim letters.