IRS Restructuring
IRS Job Cuts to Make Way for New Hires - This is really just a shifting of IRS personnel between different tasks and locales. They have been shifting their workload again among the service centers around the country. Also, the increase in people filing their returns electronically has reduced the need for data entry on the IRS side.

In fact, everyone needs to be careful where they send their income tax returns this filing season; as the appropriate service centers have been changed for many filers. Here in Arkansas, we will now be sending our 1040s to Austin or Dallas instead of the Memphis service center. To make things even more confusing, there are now different addresses to use depending on whether the taxpayers prepare their own returns or use the services of paid preparers. There are also different addresses depending on whether the return includes a payment or not.

I normally explain to people that the true blame for the messy complicated tax system lies with our rulers in Congress who draw up the idiotic and illogical laws. However, IRS isn't completely innocent in this regard, as illustrated by this new level of complexity with so many different new filing addresses. I am going to give IRS the benefit of the doubt and assume that returns sent to the wrong address will eventually find their way to the proper processing location.

You can get to the appropriate addresses from the IRS website

There is also an easier to use guide to the new filing addresses in the latest QuickFinder handbook which just arrived a few days ago. Any tax pro who doesn't have this is most likely wasting huge amounts of time looking things up that the QuickFinder book literally has at our fingertips.


- posted by Kerry M. Kerstetter, MBA~CPA~ATP~ATA @ 1/08/2004 10:48:00 AM Send this post: