INTRODUCTION
Section 7803(c)(2)(B)(ii)(IX) of the IRC requires the National Taxpayer Advocate, as part of the Annual Report to Congress, to propose legislative recommendations to resolve problems encountered by taxpayers. This year, we present 65 legislative recommendations.We have taken the following steps to make these recommendations as accessible and user-friendly as possible for Members of Congress and their staffs:
• We have consolidated our recommendations from various sections of this year’s report, prior reports, and other sources into this single volume.
• We have grouped our recommendations into categories that generally reflect the various stages in the tax administration process so that, for example, return filing issues are presented separately from audit and collection issues.
• We have presented each legislative recommendation in a format like the one used for congressional committee reports, with “Present Law,” “Reasons for Change,” and “Recommendation(s)” sections.
• This year, for the first time, we have added a summary section at the beginning of each legislative recommendation. It describes the “Problem” and our suggested “Solution” in layman’s terms. Our objective is to allow readers to quickly get a feel for all 65 of our recommendations by scanning the summaries.
• Where bills have been introduced in the past that are generally consistent with one of our recommendations, we have included a footnote at the end of the recommendation that identifies one or more of those bills. (Because of the large number of bills introduced in each Congress, we may have overlooked some. We apologize for any bills we have inadvertently omitted.)
• We have compiled a table, which appears at the end of this volume as Appendix 1, that identifies additional materials relating to our recommendations, where such materials exist. In addition to identifying a larger number of prior bills than we cite in our footnotes, the table provides references to more detailed issue discussions that have been published in prior National Taxpayer Advocate reports.

By our count, Congress has enacted approximately 50 legislative recommendations that the National Taxpayer Advocate has proposed. See Appendix 2 for a complete listing. This total includes approximately 23 provisions that were included as part of the Taxpayer First Act.

1The Office of the Taxpayer Advocate is a non-partisan, independent organization within the IRS that advocates for the interests of taxpayers. We have dubbed this the “Purple Book” because the color purple, as a mix of red and blue, has come to symbolize bipartisanship. Historically, tax administration legislation has attracted bipartisan support. For example, the Taxpayer First Act was approved by both the House and the Senate in 2019 on voice votes with no recorded opposition.

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