IRS help centers gave incorrect information

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Posted: 9/4/03

WASHINGTON (AP) - IRS centers established to help people prepare their tax returns gave incorrect answers - or no answer at all - to 43 percent of the questions asked by Treasury Department investigators posing as taxpayers.
The investigators concluded that half a million taxpayers may have been given wrong information between July and December 2002.
Internal Revenue Service employees gave wrong answers to 28 percent of the questions. Twelve percent went unanswered, as taxpayers were told to do their own research in IRS publications. In 3 percent of the attempts to get questions answered, the auditor could not get any service at the center.
''We recognize that an accuracy rate of 67 percent for tax law service is inadequate,'' Henry O. Lamar, the IRS commissioner overseeing individual tax returns, wrote to the investigators.
The auditors said they had a better chance of getting a correct answer when IRS employees walked them through relevant material and asked probing questions.
The questions most commonly answered incorrectly dealt with the earned income tax credit, education credit and dependents.
''The IRS' failing grade here is unacceptable,'' said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa. ''
The Treasury Department's inspector general started investigating the error rate at the nation's 400 taxpayer assistance centers when a 2001 study showed that auditors making anonymous visits got incorrect or insufficient answers to 73 percent of their tax law questions.
The IRS hopes to improve its track record and answer 80 percent of the questions correctly this year, and 85 percent correctly next year.