Summary: During the 1999 tax filing season, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) met or exceeded several of its performance measure goals. However, IRS fell short in two key areas: the ability of taxpayers to access IRS' toll-free telephone service and the quality of IRS' answers to taxpayers who called with tax law questions. Also, IRS' accomplishment in a third area?the timeliness of refunds for paper returns?raised questions about the agency's timeliness that IRS could not answer. Other significant findings from the 1999 tax filing season included the following: IRS enhanced the availability of its walk-in service by increasing Saturday hours and making services more convenient for taxpayers who did not have easy access to a walk-in office. Use of IRS' World Wide Web site rose significantly during the 1999 tax filing season. IRS stopped millions of dollars in erroneous claims for the earned income credit in 1999 by validating social security numbers and scrutinizing some claims. Of the nearly 126 million tax returns filed in 1999, 29.3 million, or 23 percent, were filed electronically. IRS launched several initiatives directed at making electronic filing paperless and thus more appealing to potential users. Twenty percent of the returns filed in 1999 included the new child tax credit. Many of these taxpayers, however, miscalculated the credit amount, and many other taxpayers who were eligible for the credit failed to claim it. IRS made significant changes to the computer systems that it uses to process returns and remittances without any discernable processing disruptions.
