About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

GAO-15-420R 1 (2015-02-27)

handle is hein.gao/gaobaairi0001 and id is 1 raw text is: GAOU.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE 441 G St. N.W. Washington, DC 20548 February 27, 2015 Congressional Requesters Internal Revenue Service: Observations on IRS's Operations, Planning, and Resources This letter transmits briefing slides in response to your requests for information based on our ongoing reviews of the fiscal year 2016 budget request for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the 2015 tax filing season. See the enclosed briefing slides which include the information used to brief your staff in February 2015. Our briefing objectives were to describe (1) trends in IRS's budget and operations for fiscal years 2009 through 2015, including the 2015 filing season to date; (2) key aspects of the President's fiscal year 2016 budget request for IRS; and (3) IRS's actions to strategically manage operations. To describe trends in IRS's budget and operations, we reviewed the President's budget requests and IRS's congressional justifications for fiscal years 2009 through 2016, reviewed IRS filing season performance data, and interviewed IRS officials on performance and challenges. To describe key aspects of the fiscal year 2016 budget request, we reviewed budget proposals and interviewed IRS officials. To analyze IRS's actions to strategically manage operations, we reviewed planning documents and interviewed IRS officials. We also reviewed prior GAO work that recommended improvements to IRS's strategic management, and we interviewed IRS officials about the status of recommendations. To assess the reliability of IRS's filing season performance data, we interviewed knowledgeable officials about computer systems and data limitations. To assess the reliability of budget numbers presented in the congressional justification, we compared the numbers to those presented in the President's budget. We determined that the data presented in this report were sufficiently reliable for our purposes. We conducted this performance audit from January 2015 to February 2015 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. In summary, we found the following: IRS's fiscal year 2015 appropriation ($10.9 billion) and staffing levels (81,279 full-time equivalents, or FTE) continue a decline that has occurred over several years and are now below fiscal year 2009 levels. Since fiscal year 2010, IRS's annual appropriation has declined by $1.2 billion, and staffing has fallen by about 11,000 FTEs since fiscal year 2009, while the agency's workload has increased for reasons such as a surge in identity theft-related refund fraud and the implementation of key provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). In response to budget cuts, IRS has taken steps to reduce staffing costs including extending a hiring freeze and limiting seasonal GAO-15-420R Internal Revenue Service Page 1

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most