The new year means that last year’s taxes are ready to file for most individuals. The Internal Revenue service has many resources to make filing easier, but the agency is pushing to better communicate these to the citizens they serve. Danny Werfel, Managing Director and partner at the Boston Consulting Group, says that the IRS is always trying to improve their relationship with the taxpayer.
“The IRS is organized around two major activities: services and enforcement. The services part is around their mission of ‘how do they help taxpayers meet their tax obligation?’ The enforcement side is audit and investigations. That’s obviously critically important. That’s what people think about when they think of the IRS, but an equal amount of energy and attention at the IRS is spent on ‘How do we make the taxpayer journey more effective?” Werfel said. “In today’s age, it shouldn’t surprise you that e-platforms and modern solutions are the way to advance better customer solutions. This agreement that was announced the other day is basically saying we are going to work with industry and make improvements to the eFile program and the major improvement they’re focusing on is improving the access that the taxpayers have to the Free File program. That benefit has been out there for a long time. It just hasn’t been used the way the IRS wants it to be used.”
