Owe money? Talk to an IRS voice bot about it!

[BobKamman]

Want to impress your clients with how much you know about IRS collection activity? There is a terrific blog post today about a conference where Darren Guillot, Deputy Commissioner for SBSE (Collection), spoke. Among the noteworthy developments:  

“Starting in the summer of 2022 an authenticated voice bot will answer questions and let taxpayers set up an installment agreement. Going live now is a chat bot which will allow taxpayers to get answers and to make a one-time payment. Darren called this the unauthenticated version, but it can still be helpful. There will be essentially no wait time to talk to the chat bot. He is hopeful that the nearly 3 million people who qualify for a streamlined installment agreement each year will find this service helpful and that having people use it will take some of the pressure off of the Automated Call Sites (ACS).”

And then there’s the part about the huge ACS operation in Puerto Rico, because that’s where they found people who wanted the job.

https://procedurallytaxing.com/notes-from-presentation-on-collection/

[BobKamman]

Meanwhile, from the Executive Order issued on December 13, 2021:

  (b)  The Secretary of the Treasury shall design and deliver new online tools and services to ease the payment of taxes and provide the option to schedule customer support telephone call-backs.  The Secretary of the Treasury should consider whether such tools and services might include expanded automatic direct deposit refunds based on prior year tax returns, tax credit eligibility tools, and expanded electronic filing options.