The Internal Revenue Service recently receive a much needed infusion to the tune of nearly $80 billion dollars under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and earmarked nearly 5 billion of that amount for “business systems modernization.”  With these funds, it is expected that the IRS will expand its digital services, hopefully beyond their current Taxpayer Digital Communications (TDC) program which to date, has fallen short of expectations.  This program was intended to enable both taxpayers and tax professionals to better communicate and share information in a secure manner.  Currently, communicating with the IRS is nothing short of a nightmare.  It was recently reported that the IRS responds to 11 percent of the calls it receives and more than 50 percent of correspondence currently remains unprocessed.  To combat this mess, the IRS needs a clear path toward better digital communications.

An attempt as such digitization came in 2021 when the IRS introduced the TaxPro Account platform which everyone thought at the time represented a major step forward toward a fully integrated digital tax system aimed at benefiting taxpayers and tax professionals. Unfortunately, its functionality was severely limited because of the inability of the platform to enable secure messaging and the ability to upload documents.  However, hopefully with the new funding provided by IRA,  the Tax Pro Account will be expanded to include the following additional functionality for the tax practitioner:

• view all clients’ Online Accounts;
• view all changes and new information posted to a taxpayer’s account;
• view all notices and letters mailed to the taxpayer;
• view the status of pending refunds and requests;
• view information on digital payment options;
• upload requested documents relating to notices or correspondence on a tax issue; and
• send messages to an IRS employee working their client’s case.