According to Accounting Today, the IRS is set to undergo significant changes this tax season, with proposed legislation and policy shifts poised to impact taxpayers and tax professionals alike.

Two bills advancing through Congress—the Electronic Filing and Payment Fairness Act and the IRS Math and Taxpayer Help Act—aim to improve tax filing processes and taxpayer transparency. 

The Electronic Filing and Payment Fairness Act would extend the “mailbox rule” to electronic submissions, ensuring that tax returns and payments submitted electronically are treated the same as those sent by mail. Currently, only physical documents benefit from this rule, leaving electronic filers without the same protections. 

The IRS Math and Taxpayer Help Act seeks to improve transparency by requiring the IRS to provide clear explanations when making “math error” corrections on tax returns. Under this bill, taxpayers would have 60 days to respond and challenge any discrepancies before the IRS takes further action. 

Meanwhile, a potential agreement between the IRS and the White House’s Office of Personnel Management has raised concerns about taxpayer data security. According to Bloomberg Law, a draft agreement grants certain officials expanded access to sensitive taxpayer information for software testing and debugging purposes, prompting questions about privacy safeguards.

Accounting Today also discussed reporting digital assets to the IRS. It said that, although digital asset brokers, banks, traders as well as other individual cryptocurrency players are currently required to start reporting their customers' digital assets to the the agency, decentralized finance firms are still benefiting from the two-year buffer period. A pro-crypto Trump administration will possibly also offer future wins to the sector.