This past May, at the conclusion of the AICPA’s Spring Meeting of Council, several hundred CPAs from across the nation met with Members of Congress to ask them to support consolidating existing IRS units into a Practitioner Services Division so that taxpayer issues are more efficiently resolved.

ASCPA leaders met with all of Alabama’s U.S. Representatives and Senators to share how tax practitioners now rely on many different IRS programs, processes and tools situated throughout the organization to resolve clients’ tax issues. They also discussed how the operating systems for these programs do not easily communicate with each other and do not have access to the same taxpayer information.

The Taxpayer First Act of 2019 has been signed by the President and will soon be implemented. That bill contains many provisions that help improve IRS operations and services to taxpayers, but the bill does not include the formation of a Practitioner Services Division. Our efforts on Capitol Hill to encourage the administrative creation of the Practitioners Services Division has raised awareness and we will work to keep the effort moving. The ASCPA and the entirety of the accounting profession therefore encourages Congress to take further action and support the creation of the Practitioner Services Division through administrative means.

We believe that the development of this Division is a key component of the ongoing modernization of the IRS and can provide practitioners with the ability to help taxpayers more easily navigate the complexities of the U.S. tax code. The creation of the Practitioners Services Division is something that we hope all members of Congress will support.  This effort coupled with recent legislation has started the long overdue process of modernizing the IRS.  The next step in this process should be to prioritize the consolidation of existing units to create this important division.

As the IRS begins to move into a new era of modernizing its practices, policies and systems, the ASCPA believes that tax professionals should have the tools to aid taxpayers in successfully adhering to the updated tax code. While this bill generally moves the IRS in the right direction, there’s more to be done, and the ASCPA and AICPA will continue to advocate for tax preparers and IRS efficiency.