TAXES: A mistake is about to be made, but is it by IRS or by us the Tax Professionals?

I think a bad decision has been made by the Internal Revenue Service but I think we tax professionals may have given them the wrong signal to make it.  What I am writing about is two of the best applications in the e-services for tax professionals that IRS has. E-services which allows you to get information almost 24 hours 7 days a week online will on August 11, 2013 discontinue the Disclosure Authorization (power of attorney) and Electronic Account Resolution (transcripts).  IRS says it is due to low usage.  Fewer than 10 percent of all the power of attorney applications go through e-services and less than 3 percent for transcript applications.

So what does this mean to us tax professionals and our clients the taxpayers?  Maybe nothing since we are not apparently taking advantage of the technology.  However IRS has shorten its hours of telephone operations and reduce the staff of its correspondence operations.  So that means there will be more tax professionals on the telephone waiting for fewer IRS telephone personnel and more documents faxed in to be handled by fewer IRS correspondence personnel.

So the end result could be more pressure on tax professionals and higher fees for clients.

What do you think?

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