IRS Formally Establishes Taxpayer Experience Office
The IRS recently announced that it has formally established the first-ever Taxpayer Experience Office as part of a longer-term effort to improve taxpayer service.
The Taxpayer Experience Office will focus on all aspects of taxpayer transactions with the IRS across the service, compliance and other program areas, working in conjunction with all IRS business units and coordinating closely with the Taxpayer Advocate Service.
The office is part of the effort envisioned in the IRS Taxpayer First Act Report to Congress that was published last year. The report included input and feedback from taxpayers, tax professionals and the tax community that helped develop the Taxpayer Experience Strategy. The report identified over a hundred different programs and tools that would help taxpayers, including a 360-degree view of taxpayer accounts, expanded e-File and payment options, digital signatures, secure two-way messaging and online accounts for businesses and tax professionals.
To help drive the IRS strategic direction for improving the taxpayer experience, the Taxpayer Experience Office has identified key activities the IRS is focusing on over the next five years, including the commitments outlined in the President's Executive Order on Transforming Federal Customer Experience and Service Delivery to Rebuild Trust in Government.
The goals of the Taxpayer Experience Office are to identify changing taxpayer expectations and industry trends, focus on customer service best practices and promote a consistent voice and experience across all taxpayer segments by developing agency-wide taxpayer experience guidelines and expectations. The office will be adding staff in the coming months to help support these efforts.
Some areas of improvement in the near term include expanding customer callback and payment options and providing secure two-way messaging and more services for multilingual customers. The IRS stated that these activities build on recent improvements such as digital tools to support Economic Impact Payments and the Advance Child Tax Credit, online chat and the online tax professional account.