Reports

Ensure that all sites understand and begin immediately stamping the ICT received date after correspondence screening is completed, and that individual and business documents are screened with equal importance.

Coordinate with the Information Technology organization to explore adding Taxpayer Relations inventories into the CII, so that all Accounts Management inventory is located in the same inventory management system.

The Commissioner, Wage and Investment Division, should establish time frames for and a process to measure correspondence screening timeliness at each site.

The Commissioner, Wage and Investment Division, should rescind the requirement that only the TEs and the CSRs perform correspondencescreening and encourage all sites to use mail clerks, after providing them with adequate training.

The Commissioner, Wage and Investment Division, should ensure prompt completion of the ICT review to determine if additional scanners will be purchased.

Discontinue correspondence screening via telework and ensure at all sites that screening must be conducted in the same IRS facility where documents are being scanned by the ICT.

Identify and address the cause of Accounts Management function employees incorrectly routing cases to other IRS functions and work with other IRS functions to update their Internal Revenue Manuals to make it clear that incorrectly routed documents should be returned to the originating employee.

We recommended that management take steps to hire as many mail clerks as possible.

The Commissioner, Wage and Investment Division, should establish goals for each of the Accounts Management function’s inventory types and develop a plan for addressing those goals to ensure a timely return to pre-pandemic inventory levels.

The Commissioner, Wage and Investment, should prioritize funding and implementation of automated processing of Forms 1040-X to increase efficiencies and reduce taxpayer burden.

The Commissioner, Wage and Investment Division, should implement temporary solutions for the processing of Forms 1040-X to reduce the backlogs, reduce taxpayer burden, and save IRS resources until an automated solution is implemented.

Coordinate with the Information Technology organization to prevent generating transcripts for manual refunds less than $100 and adjust the frequency that some transcripts are generated to help management get through the inventory more efficiently.

Temporarily relieve employees in the Accounts Management function from having to complete paperwork for barred statutes, so they can focus on eliminating the backlogged inventory and prevent future barred statutes.