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Washington Post reports: Taxpayer Advocates leave their Clients in the Lurch in challenging IRS

The Taxpayer Advocate Service (TAS), a government organization that helps taxpayers resolve issues with the IRS, has been accused of leaving some of its clients in the lurch. According to a report in The Washington Times, once a taxpayer is assigned an advocate, the IRS is no longer allowed to communicate directly with them, leaving some taxpayers feeling stuck and unable to resolve their issues.

Pete Sepp, president of the National Taxpayers Union, believes that this may be an issue of resources, with too few people handling too many tasks, resulting in taxpayers falling through the cracks. This is particularly worrying at a time when the IRS is increasing its efforts to collect unpaid taxes and close the “tax gap” between what the government believes it is owed and what people are actually paying. Lindsey Pope, a spokesperson for the Office of the National Taxpayer Advocate, admitted that mistakes do happen and that TAS is doing its best to help taxpayers resolve their issues as quickly as possible, but with over 250,000 cases a year, “sometimes we aren’t as thorough as we aim to be.”

Once again this points to the fact that clients without proper representation are rarely able to properly resolve IRS problems.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]