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time of year that we invite the national taxpayer advocate chat with viewers. remind viewers what the role of the national taxpayer advocate is. guest: sure. the office that the, the taxpayer advocate service, and the position that i have work created by congress about 25 or so years ago. it was the intent to help taxpayers, those folks having challenges with the irs. we refer to ourselves as the safety net when all sales, our office is there to help taxpayers one on one. congress also gave us the authority to provide recommendations for the irs with respect to problems of service or administration or they focus

on protecting taxpayer rights. we have the ability by the statute to provide administrative recommendations and also the ability to provide legislative recommendations. in our annual report to congress, we provide recommendations to improve administration, to make it easier to file your taxes. host: a line from that report to congress -- the year 2023 was one of extraordinary transition for the irs and taxpayers. cautious optimism. why do you have cautious optimism? guest: i think a lot of us are trying to put the pandemic behind us, but during those years, the irs was also struggling. like everyone else, at the beginning of 2020, the irs did

shut down its facilities. as a result, returns were piling up. it took the irs two to three years to get out of the challenges that covid caused. last year, the irs closed out the year almost even with respect to the returns that had been filed. electronic returns were processed. payments were made, but they still have areas they need to improve. telephone service -- there was a period of time, i think 2021, only 11% of calls were being answered by the irs. taxpayers were calling three times as much as in previous years. it was a struggle for taxpayers as well as irs folks. what we are looking at currently is that this filing season will be a bit more smooth. we are seeing electronic returns that are being filed and paid promptly. things are looking good.

i have my fingers crossed. host: the place where you note that you have continued concerns, though, is the irs assisting victims of identity theft. guest: these are folks who have had their identity stolen. someone has commune in and pretended they filed a return say that ty are erin collins in order to get my refund. when i finally file my return, i realized sy has already claimed my tax retur the challenge the irs had was in order to get caught up, with the irs was doing was borrowing from peter to pay paul. they were moving resources around to prioritize the filing of tax returns. they moved people who helped folks who were victims of identity theft and moved them to

do other work. as a result, what we saw was those returns took about an average of 19 months in order for the folks to properly identify themselves and get those refunds, which i think we all agree is not a reasonable period of time. we are currently working with the irs. they are aware of the issue and trying to move the resources back to that position so we can clear out the backlog and fix it. host: the employee intention recredit? guest: that came out with the cares act in 2020. congress wanted to help businesses in need. think about small businesses, a restaurant for example. with covid, a lot of customers were not coming into restaurants. what congress wanted businesses to do in that situation was keep their employees on roll, in

order for them to still receive a paycheck even though the business was not receiving the same amount of customers coming in. it was win-win -- the business stayed afloat and employees received a salary. congress created the employee retention credit as a way to provide businesses additional relief. host: and from the taxpayer perspective -- the document upload tool, what is that? guest: the document upload tool is something that irs i.t. folks came up with. my office was struggling getting documents into the irs. things were getting delayed. we talked to our i.t. folks and said can you come up with a portal so that taxpayers can upload it directly from their phone. if you are trying to help a taxpayer with respect to income

tax credits where they were trying to establish that their child lived with them and we wanted them to upload documents, they could take a picture from their phone and up load -- uploadrough this tool and get it directly to our case advocates. with the irs has done is they have not taken that to all plated across the board. challenge is the total was not originally designed to take the volume of everything that comes into the irs on paper. now the front end of the total works great -- people can upload the information. but the irs has to create backend processing. when the document comes in through the tool, they can get it out to respective divisions rather quickly. right now, it is all going to a coordinated place. we need the tools to send it to the correct unit so people can work the paper. host: there is a lot in these

reports. the most interesting thing is to have you chat with taxpayers themselves. here is how viewers can do that. erin collins of the national taxpayer advocate office, it is (202) 748-8000 for those in the eastern or central time zones. (202) 748-8001 if you are in the mountain or pacific time zones. the national taxpayer advocate will be with us until 10:00 a.m. eastern. brent in michigan is up first. caller: hello. i do not know if this is something you can address but i have heard representatives, republican representatives, repeat over and over that tax cuts increase revenues. that is one thing. is that true? another is that i am a -- a

caller supporting trump a couple of days ago since he voted for trump because trump would lower interest rates. could you address the importance of the independence of the federal reserve from political influence? guest: since i do not work for the federal reserve, i have a similar role in the sense that i am independent of the irs. our agency is an independent organization housed within the irs. i would not exactly say we are on par with the federal reserve, but we have the same interest in the sense that we look at administration of the laws. we do not opine on policy. we leave that to congress. what we do is we try to take the laws as written and work with congress and the irs to make recommendations as to how to administer it more easily and

protect taxpayer rights. good or bad, i do not control interest rate. the importance of the independence of various organizations is critical. host: the caller said tax cuts and what it means for revenues. that aside, what about funding path cuts to the irs and what it does for revenues -- an ongoing effort to figure out how much money the irs should have worked whether it should be clawed back. any thoughts on that? guest: when you think about what the irs does, it ran is not the best. a lot of people once or twice a year when they have to do with the irs, they mumble bad words under their breath, but the irs brings in over n98% of the country's revenue.

that is what congress is able to allocate for services. it is a vital function for this country. it is important that it be properly funded. in order to collect that revenue, we need the resources within the agency to do a good job. if we can help taxpayers provide a better service, better guidance, quicker resolution, i think that is going to help on the back end, which will be very -- will maybe encourage people voluntary compliance. if they are not funded properly, it makes it hard for the irs to do their job on behalf of taxpayer host: dave you were tweeted in this question, asking about an armed government agency. guest: that seems to have gotten

a lot of play in the last couple of years. irs does have a criminal investigation action that -- function that on certain types of things they will get involved. for example, any criminal fraud. they usually work with the fbi are other federal agencies. these are for the most serious cases. it is a small division within the irs. irs has approximately 90,000 employees. i think the cid division is somewhere between 2000 and 2500, a small portion of what the irs does. we have no intention of increasing the size of criminal investigation agents. good or bad, nobody else carries guns in the irs. i do not think that is where the irs will be going. host: freehold, new jersey, ken, good morning.

are you with us? this is bill in florida. caller: [indiscernible] host: we will work on your line and go to michael in cleveland, ohio. caller: good morning. the question is campbell gates -- now exempt from campbell gates taxes? guest: that is not my expertise. i do not want to give you the wrong guidance. that is something you could reach out to the irs to get additional help on. irs.gov is also a good resource. if you put in requests or questions about capital gains, you may able to find your answer

relatively quickly. host: why is it so hard to figure out what you owe every year? guest: taxes are complex. part of the reason is taxpayers lives, as well as companies, their transactions are complex. when you look at the internal revenue code, i think part of the challenge is you look at what taxpayers do from investments to businesses two types of entities to if you have a corporation, a partnership, are you married? single? when you look at people's lives, they are complex. what the code is trying to take into account as all those variables when congress establishes the "law." it is not easy to file a return. host: is anybody talking about holding up a postcard and saying

we should do our taxes on a postcard? guest: last year, we talked about tax simplification. [captioning performed by thenat, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2024] >> members are expected to debate foreign policy measures. live coverage of the house here on c-span.