The Internal Revenue Service intends to process complaints against tax preparers from their clients in a more timely way, in response to a new government report that found it had begun work on only about half the complaints it received since October 2012.
The report, from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, reviewed 8,354 complaints against tax preparers received by the IRS between Oct. 1, 2012 and Sept. 11, 2013 and identified 3,953 (or 47 percent) for which work on the complaints had yet to be initiated. Of the 3,953 complaints, 1,920 (49 percent) had been in the IRS’s inventory for at least 60 business days with no work initiated.
In addition, processes have not been established to effectively track the complaint referrals to IRS business functions to ensure that the complaints are received for evaluation and track how the referred complaints are ultimately resolved.