National Taxpayer Associate Erin Collins said the Internal Revenue Service should improve online service offerings to better meet the needs of individual and corporate taxpayers and tax professionals and one of the measures is the need to expand online account functionality and features.
Collins wrote in a blog post published Thursday that the Online Account application should provide taxpayers with the capability to easily access IRS online tools, information and services.
“The IRS should continue to leverage its online services to provide personalized messages based on the specific taxpayer’s interaction,” she wrote. “By including targeted links to IRS.gov and IRS video content, the IRS could promote compliance and bolster taxpayer satisfaction relatively inexpensively.”
Collins noted that the IRS has made progress when it comes to enhancing the identity authentication process to protect sensitive financial data and prevent fraud and suggested that taxpayers should be given a capability to get access to digital services using a self-service mechanism or a video chat agent during the identity verification process.
“A single secure log-in combined with a consolidated resources page or customer hub shown after log-in may increase taxpayer confidence and knowledge in using online services and products,” she added.
Collins also highlighted the need for the IRS to provide taxpayers with the ability to use a single portal that would enable them to transmit and receive messages, check the status of an amended or original tax return, download and upload data and documents and receive emails of pending action items, among others.
