The IRS continued to improve its filing season performance in March and has met other objectives, Stephen Mankowski, tax chair of the National Conference of CPA Practitioners (NCCPAP) told Accounting Today.

In addition to clearing its carryover backlog for original return processing, the IRS has met certain objectives, including:

● Improving the average answer time and level of service to more than an 80 percent level of service;
● Enabling taxpayers to respond to notices online and have the IRS receive their responses. Online payment plans have been successful, with more than 11,000 agreements secured in the first month; 
● Rolling out new voice bots in Collections and continuing to expand callback features; and
● Scanning and digitizing more forms, including Form 941, and adding returns to Error Resolution, with errors reduced and handled quickly.

"Alabama, Georgia, and California have been named as disaster states that have until October to file their returns," he said. "Form 1040-X, amended tax returns, still has a lot of inventory. The IRS is working to add assisters to process them. Even though more 1040-X forms are being electronically filed, the backlog is still an issue."

In addition, the IRS has developed a strategic operating plan for the Small Business/Self-Employed Division that it will share with the Treasury Department in a few weeks, Accounting Today reported. It has also increased audits; continued hiring; made enhancements to installment agreements; and used bots to answer 9.2 million calls concerning with payment plans since the bot program was set up last year. A large percentage of these calls are for taxpayers with balances of less than $25,000.

The IRS will select random taxpayers to participate in its Taxpayer Compliance Burden Survey to provide the agency with accurate estimates of the time and cost expended to amend an already-filed federal tax return.

It has also been working on various multilingual initiatives over the past two decades. It continually looks at limited English proficiency (LEP) taxpayers to identify areas of concern and to focus on the five languages—Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean and Russian—that amount to 85 percent of LEP returns, Accounting Today reported.