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

GAO-03-913R 1 (2003-09-15)

handle is hein.gao/gaobaamhk0001 and id is 1 raw text is: I AmA Accountability * Integrity * Reliability United States General Accounting Office Washington, DC 20548 September 15, 2003 The Honorable Elton Gallegly House of Representatives Subject: Reliability of Information on Taxpayers Claiming Many Withholding Allowances or Exemption from Federal Income Tax Withholding Dear Mr. Gallegly: When taxpayers claim more withholding allowances than they are entitled to or improperly claim exemption from withholding, either no tax or too little tax is withheld from their wages. As a result, some taxpayers end up owing the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) additional taxes, and if the taxes are not paid on time, they become delinquent. This report responds to your request for information on these taxpayers. Specifically, you asked that we provide you with information on (1) how many taxpayers claimed more than 10 allowances for federal income tax withholding purposes and (2) how many taxpayers claimed exemption from federal income tax withholding and, of those taxpayers, what proportion did not file federal income tax returns and had invalid Social Security numbers. However, because of concerns about the completeness and currency of the information reported to IRS on taxpayers who claimed more than 10 withholding allowances or taxpayers who claimed exemption from withholding, we could not use it to respond to your questions. This report discusses why we could not use IRS's information to answer your questions and briefly describes IRS's proposals to help address this problem. To perform our work, we analyzed information from IRS's Questionable Form W-4 database' and interviewed IRS officials responsible for managing the Questionable Form W-4 program. Further details on our scope and methodology are provided later in this report. Results in Brief We have two concerns about the information that IRS maintains on taxpayers who claimed more than 10 withholding allowances or exemption from federal tax withholding that preclude us from using it to answer your questions. First, we are concerned about the completeness of the information because a significant number of employers may not send IRS the required forms. Second, some of the information may not be current-it may not reflect the current withholding status of some 'This refers to IRS's Questionable Form W-4 Case Control System. GAO-03-913R Reliability of IRS's Form W-4 Information

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