Trump Administration to Modernize IRS, Make Agency ‘Most Efficient and Effective’ for Taxpayers

The Trump administration is moving to modernize the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) technologies to have it better serve the American taxpayer.

A senior career tech executive at the IRS explained during a press conference call that the agency needs to be “modern and effective to provide the best service to our taxpayers.”

The senior executive at the IRS said the agency would pursue a “strategic pause” to better modernize the agency and ensure the agency operates in a “manner that is most efficient and effective for our taxpayers.”

“Over the last several weeks, we have been heavily involved in doing just that behind the scenes. Filing Season has continued, as has been signed and from a technology and strategic perspective, our filing season continues to accept our technology, continues to accept returns and send out payments without any significant issues,” the executive said, explaining that the IRS has continued to operate as normal while it looks at how to make the agency more efficient.

The senior tech executive at the IRS said the agency’s Direct File is also under review, which allows Americans to file their taxes directly with the agency without the help of third-party companies such as TurboTax or H&R Block.

The executive said there are “enormous opportunities” to be exploited in regard to the processing of taxpayer review with the revamping of the IRS’s technologies.

Many of these technological updates include the “where is my refund” technology to help Americans better understand the status of their federal income tax return. He added that the agency can better automate the availability of the agency’s call lines and call back features, so that Americans would not have to wait on the line continuously while they wait for an IRS representative.

“I think there’s a lot of opportunity here, and that’s why the action to pause and reassess to ensure that the investments being made are providing the returns that we have intended and intend to achieve is necessary,” he explained.

The senior tech executive at the IRS said that modernizing the IRS has been a decades-long project.

“Modernization has been in the works for a very long time. I think 1990 this sort of goal of a modernized, largely digital taxpayer experience was, was announced,” he said. “And, I would say, given that, if there was something like 30 years … beyond that timeline, about $15 billion of our public budget, that’s sort of where we stand today. And, I think there’s a much cheaper industry standard way of approaching such a tech modernization. That’s really what we want to do, starting now.”