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Tax Advocate needs break
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February 22, 1999: 5:07 p.m. ET
GAO says National Taxpayer Advocate staff overworked
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - The Internal Revenue Service's National Taxpayer Advocate's staff is suffering under the weight of increased workloads, according to a General Accounting Office survey.
Cornelia M. Ashby, the GAO's associate director of tax policy and administrative issues, discussed the results of the survey recently before the House Ways and Means Committee's Subcommittee on Oversight.
The report focused on the National Taxpayer Advocate's office, a division of the IRS that heads up the Problem Resolution Program, or PRP. The program's goal is to help taxpayers who cannot solve their problems through normal IRS channels or who are suffering significant hardships.
Ashby noted in her report that PRP closed more than 300,000 cases during fiscal year 1998, and about 10 percent of these involved potential hardships. There are about 508 staffers at the advocate's office, while about 1,500 employees do PRP casework in IRS field offices.
She told the House subcommittee that the advocate's office and PRP workloads have increased over the last 18 months.
"Local advocates told us that workload increases could compromise PRP's ability to help taxpayers," Ashby said in her prepared statement.
Ashby said one of the criteria for deciding what makes a PRP case is "broad enough to encompass virtually any taxpayer contact."
If PRP "accepts cases that could be handled elsewhere in IRS, the program could become overburdened, potentially reducing the PRP's ability to help taxpayers who have nowhere else to go to resolve their problems."
Ashby said the survey showed advocates and their staffs were spending about 10 percent of their time on advocacy and PRP caseworkers were spending less than 1 percent of their time on advocacy.
While acknowledging the need to give priority to casework over advocacy, Ashby said the advocate's ability to deal with the competing priorities is hampered by the lack of a coordinated approach for conducting advocacy efforts and information to prioritize potential advocacy work.
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