Joseph L. Santoro, a member of the National Society of Accountants (NSA), testified before the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Oversight Board last week regarding the customer service needs of taxpayers.

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The Treasury reports that tax proposals pressed by the White House will cost the government billions in revenue, according to the Washington Post. The White House wants to make permanent the tax breaks for dividends and capital gains that expire at year end, 2008. These tax breaks would cost the government $7.74 billion in 2008 and $37.02 billion in 2009, according to its “Blue Book” description of revenue proposals in the president’s fiscal 2007 budget.

“It’s galling that they have a marriage penalty for seniors, when they’ve addressed it for everyone else,” Lonell Spencer, a 77-year-old retiree from Arcadia, Connecticut, told the Hartford Courant.The penalty he’s referring to is the tax on Social Security income, which applies to every dollar of income over $32,000 for married couples, compared to $25,000 for a single taxpayer.

Thirteen states now mandate that tax preparers electronically file their clients’ individual tax returns. More such mandates may be required, if the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is to ever realize its vision of widespread e-filing, argues the Federation of Tax Administrators (FTA).Last week, when reports surfaced that the IRS is five years behind its goal of having 80 percent of all returns electronically filed this year, FTA President Harley Duncan said that his organization has concluded that the e-filing growth that has occurred is primarily due to the state mandates.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced today that new steps, including the notification of taxpayers when refunds are frozen and the more timely release of frozen refunds not warranting further review, have been undertaken to improve the Questionable Refund Program (QRP) and reduce the number of taxpayers subject to frozen refunds.Advertisement

The use of computerized tax preparation software has risen with the number of taxpayers filing their returns electronically. According to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), some 68.5 million individual returns were filed electronically in 2005. That is more than half of all returns filed and 11.3 percent more than in 2004. Of those, 17 million were prepared on home computers, up 17 percent in 2005, according to the Associated Press. Lois Forsythe, owner of MMP Computers, told the Associated Press, “It’s so much easier.

A federal appeals court in Washington D.C., in December, became the third appeals court to void the federal excise tax on telephone services which are billed only by time, and not by time and distance, USAToday reports. The excise tax, originally levied to support the Spanish-American War, was last amended in 1965, when the statutory definition of long distance charges became “time and distance”, according to technology-reports.com. The government has argued that the intent of the law is to tax all commercial long distance.

In an effort to better connect with taxpayers, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has added online payment options to the usual ways for us to pay our taxes. Paying your taxes online integrates with their current electronic filing program. In 2004, more than 68 million taxpayers filed electronically, according to Bankrate.com. Most people file electronically because they are due refunds, but now the IRS is offering ways to pay for the rest of us who might pay writing a check, according to Bankrate.com. Any of these options will surely be welcome come Monday, April 17th.