Thank you for inviting me to testify at your hearing today on IRS operations. As you know, I lead the Taxpayer Advocate Service (TAS), an independent organization within the IRS that advocates for taxpayers. TAS has two main functions – “case advocacy” and “systemic advocacy.” In most years our case advocacy operations
assist more than 200,000 taxpayers in resolving account problems with the IRS.2 On the systemic side, TAS identifies problems that are harming groups of taxpayers, and we make administrative and legislative recommendations to mitigate those problems.
By statute, I am required to submit two annual reports to the congressional tax-writing committees each year, and I describe, and make recommendations to mitigate, the “most serious problems” facing taxpayers in my December 31 report.

Read More