Status: Open
Completion Date: TBD
Quarterly Update:
2nd Quarter: The Taxpayer Advocate Service (TAS) continues to advocate for adequately sustained, multiyear funding for the IRS to allow for increased hiring capacity. We also plan to make recommendations for further improvement in the upcoming TAS Fiscal Year (FY) 2023 Objectives Report and the National Taxpayer Advocate’s (NTA) 2022 Annual Report to Congress (ARC). Further, we will continue to advocate for TAS embedded Human Resources (HR) personnel to process our internal and external hiring actions. We continue to partner with IRS to improve and expedite the hiring and onboarding process, including attending meetings with our Human Capital Office (HCO) partners and regular high-level meetings between TAS’ Deputy National Taxpayer Advocate (DNTA) and the IRS Deputy Human Capital Officer.
Lastly, the IRS NEXT Office “Employee Experience” team recently established a working group that includes representation from all IRS Business Operating Divisions, including TAS to provide input to the onboarding process.
1st Quarter: The Taxpayer Advocate Service (TAS) continues our discussions related to hiring, recruitment, and retention with IRS Human Capital Office (HCO). We will review their strategies for measurable improvement and make recommendations for improvement as necessary. We have continued to advocate for adequately sustained, multiyear funding to allow for increased IRS hiring capacity and to overcome employee attrition through the Congressional Affairs Program (CAP) Conference and the National Taxpayer Advocate’s (NTA) Annual Report to Congress (ARC), the Most Serious Problems (MSPs), and the Legislative Recommendations (LRs). For example, in the 2021 ARC, the NTA published the MSP “The Lack of Sufficient and Highly Trained Employees Impedes Effective Tax Administration” and 2022 Purple Book Legislative Recommendation “Revamp the IRS Budget Structure and Provide Sufficient Funding to Improve the Taxpayer Experience and Modernize the IRS’s Information Technology Systems” urged Congress to ensure the IRS has sufficient funding, staffing, and technology to provide a high level of service to taxpayers while protecting their rights. Also, we will continue to review changes made and implemented by IRS’ HCO to determine if it achieved measurable results to the improvement of the hiring process.
Additionally, we continue to work with the HCO, assist and comment on its plans for recruitment and hiring, and make recommendations that will meet the upcoming IRS hiring challenges while also increasing its level of customer service for taxpayers and stakeholders. This includes the recommendations in the ARC’s MSP “IRS Recruitment, Hiring, and Training: The Lack of Sufficient and Highly Trained Employees Impedes Effective Tax Administration” in line with further improving the process. Lastly, we continue to advocate for TAS’s embedded Human Resources (HR) personnel to process TAS internal and external hiring actions and partner with IRS to improve and expedite the hiring and onboarding process.