- Home
- Agencies
- Department of Agriculture
- Department of Housing and Urban Development
- General Services Administration
- Department of Commerce
- Department of the Interior
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- Department of Defense
- Department of Justice
- National Science Foundation
- Department of Education
- Department of Labor
- Office of Personnel Management
- Department of Energy
- Department of State
- Small Business Administration
- Environmental Protection Agency
- Department of Transportation
- Social Security Administration
- Department of Health and Human Services
- Department of the Treasury
- U.S. Agency for International Development
- Department of Homeland Security
- Department of Veterans Affairs
- Goals
- Initiatives
- Programs
Primary tabs
Key to Changes
This text is Revised text
This word has been added to the text
This text is Last Published text
This word has been removed from the text
Modifed styling with no visual changes
John KoskinenCommissionerIRS
FY 16-17: Agency Priority Goal
Increase Secure Self-Service Options for Taxpayers
Priority Goal
Goal Overview
The IRS will increase taxpayer satisfaction by delivering high-quality, timely, innovative, and consistent customer service that better addresses taxpayer needs, reduces burden, and encourages voluntary compliance. Using analytics and a user-centric approach, the IRS will develop online options as part of its multi-channel service model. The APG’s objective is to deliver the enabling infrastructure and next wave of digital services, which will better enable taxpayers to navigate the tax system, understand and meet their tax obligations, and conduct their business in the most efficient and effective manner. As a result of delivering better service to all taxpayers, the IRS brand will benefit by reflecting the attributes of transparency, fairness, trustworthiness, accessibility, and innovation.
Associated Strategic Goal: Treasury Strategic Goal 5 – Create a 21st century approach to government by improving efficiency, effectiveness, and customer interaction
Associated Strategic Objective: Treasury Strategic Objective 5.4 - Create a culture of service through relentless pursuit of customer value
Strategies
• Deliver a taxpayer-centric user experience: Through the use of sophisticated analytics, the IRS will uncover insights that allow it to service taxpayers by meeting their channel preferences and expectations. Increased focus on user needs will help design better digital products that match taxpayer needs within a consistent and easy-to-use experience.
• Improve search, content, products, and services: The complexity of tax laws requires taxpayers to be able to easily search, find, and understand important information. To that end, good web search and plainly written content are primary methods towards more voluntarily compliance. Many transactions currently conducted by customers in high-cost channels can be migrated to self-service or lower-cost channels.
• Design and build enabling infrastructure: There are many enabling infrastructure elements that are critical to the adoption of taxpayer online services. E-Authentication, web portals, and secure documents are three important examples of critical enablers which will provide scalability, security, and capacity in support of future service areas.
• Process and policy changes: The IRS recognizes that enhancements to the customer service delivery model and a shift towards digital services require changes to existing business processes and policies, especially in the areas of privacy, security, data management, and authentication. To that end, the IRS will identify, early on, critical business processes and policies subject to change, and involve all affected parties in defining a future state that is scalable for a broad suite of use cases.
• Promote, elicit trial, and drive adoption of new services: Once new service options are built, migrating taxpayers to behave differently will require consistent marketing and promotional efforts, not unlike the launches of other consumer products. Example activities include:
o Planning and internal/external communications
o Offering incentives to try and use new services; providing disincentives to use existing higher-cost channels
o Piloting at a smaller scale with specific taxpayer segments and tax administration partners to gauge interest, use, and adoption
o Coordinating across channels to drive awareness and adoption
o Ensuring consistency in messaging across all channels
o Measuring the success of such campaigns
• Monitor and manage performance: The IRS will establish and monitor new measures for digital self-services. These will focus on taxpayer adoption, ease of use, completion and conversion of digital transaction, and speed of end-to-end transaction (e.g., from the moment the customer is notified electronically or searches for information on a tax obligation through completion of a transaction in response to the obligation). Equally important, existing measures of performance may no longer be relevant and will need to be reassessed.
• Streamline IT development of digital services, reduce time-to-market, and coordinate funding process: The IRS recognizes the need for the creation of a faster product development process that allows us to develop, launch, learn, and iterate. Example tactics include:
o Designing simpler products to be piloted on a smaller scale for specific taxpayer segments
o Streamlining the development process for online applications via rapid prototyping
o Testing taxpayer use and adoption
o Using soft launches in coordination with tax administration partners
o Gathering useful feedback to inform future improvements for broader launches
• Use 3rd party partnerships to accelerate, complement, and deliver better service: The IRS recognizes the important role of third parties and the use of “indirect” channels across the tax ecosystem. The success of IRS e-File initiative is a good example of how external third parties have helped to deliver a better filing experience for the taxpayer. By collaborating with private and public sector partners, the IRS can increase selected customer service outreach and level of service while providing better options to taxpayers.
• Build and foster a culture of “digital-first” across the enterprise: Communicating, empowering, and fostering a digital-first culture across the IRS is key to the implementation and long-term adoption of new ways of providing customer service focused on digital options. The IRS will do so by enlisting leadership support, identifying change champions, and inculcating the workforce with online service best practices and understanding of how digital self-service provides the IRS an opportunity to better meet today’s taxpayers’ needs and improve customer satisfaction.
Progress Update
IRS Direct Pay (Soft launch Q1 FY14, most recent release – Q1 FY16)
Provides an easy-to-use electronic payment option to enable taxpayers to make payments from their bank account without any fees in a single session.
• In Q1 FY16, Direct Pay processed 1.6 million payments and collected over $2.5 billion
• In Q2 FY16, Direct Pay processed over 1.9 million payments and collected over $6.0 billion
• In Q3 FY16, Direct Pay processed over 2.5 million payments and collected over $15.5 billion
• In Q4 FY16, Direct Pay processed over 2.5 million payments and collected over $6.4 billion
eAuthentication (Launch Q4 FY12, most recent release – Q3 FY16)
Provides taxpayers a user-friendly and low-cost way to securely access and use IRS online tools and applications.
• In Q1 FY16, over 285,000 successful ID proofing authentications occurred through eAuthentication
• In Q2 FY16, over 426,000 successful ID proofing authentications occurred through eAuthentication
• In Q3 FY16, over 688,000 successful complete authentications occurred (from initial registration request through arrival at the desired online tool). With the re-launch of the GetTranscript tool in the third quarter, the IRS also launched better tracking tools so that the full customer interaction can now be measured.
• In Q4 FY16, over 699,000 successful complete authentications occurred (from initial registration request through arrival at the desired online tool).
Get Transcript (Launch Q2 FY14, reopened Q3 FY 2016)
Provides a current digital display of an individual’s tax record across five transcript types.
• In Q3 FY16, Get Transcript was re-launched with increased authentication standards (multi-factor authentication) after being taken offline in May 2015. In Q3, over 1.0 million transcripts were downloaded via the Get Transcript tool.
• In Q4 FY16, over 2.7 million transcripts were downloaded via the Get Transcript tool.
IRS2Go Mobile Application (Launch Q2 FY12, most recent release – V 5.2, Q4 FY15)
Enables taxpayer self-service access to IRS information and services anywhere, anytime, and on any device.
• In Q1 FY16, over 180,000 users engaged with the app
• In Q2 FY16, over 4.275 million users engaged with the app
• In Q3 FY16, over 1.08 million users engaged with the app
• In Q4 FY16, over 353,000 users engaged with the app
Online Payment Agreement (Launch Q3 FY14, most recent release – Q2 FY16)
Allows a taxpayer the ability to set up an Installment Agreement online for taxes due to the IRS if they cannot pay their taxes in full.
• In Q1 FY16, more than 83,000 agreements were completed, representing more than $615 million in revenue
• In Q2 FY16, more than 44,000 agreements were completed, representing more than $292 million in revenue
• In Q3 FY16, more than 203,000 agreements were created, representing more than $1.01 billion in revenue
• In Q4 FY16, more than 140,000 agreements were created, representing more than $704 million in revenue
FATCA FFI Search and Download Tool (Launch Q3 FY14)
Provides a downloadable and searchable list of all Foreign Financial Institutions (FFIs) that have registered with the IRS.
• In Q1 FY16, more than 179,000 search queries were performed with nearly 24,000 list downloads
• In Q2 FY16, more than 657,000 search queries were performed with over 8,000 list downloads
• In Q3 FY16, more than 755,000 search queries were performed
• In Q4 FY16, more than 523,000 search queries were performed
Return Preparer Lookup Tool (Launch Q2 FY15)
Provides a searchable list by location of return preparers that have registered with the IRS.
• In Q1 FY16, more than 124,000 searches were performed
• In Q2 FY16, more than 248,000 searches were performed
• In Q3 FY16, more than 68,000 searches were performed
• In Q4 FY16, more than 54,000 searches were performed
Third Party Data Services (Piloted Q2 FY 2015 and Q2/3 FY 2016)
Enables IRS to share taxpayer data with third parties (tax preparation firms, tax preparation software, and state and federal agencies) that require individual taxpayer information. All information sharing requires prior taxpayer consent.
• In Q3 FY16, the 2016 version of the Third Party Refund Status pilot project was completed. From Jan-May, the project processed a total of 3.86 million successful transactions from eight volunteer tax preparation firms, providing refund status messages for approximately 400,000 taxpayers. For this pilot, IRS limited the total number of transactions per day to 80,000 due to system and performance risks.
Next Steps
| 1 | Launch Online Taxpayer Account | Internal soft launch to roll out in Q1 FY 2017 |
| 2 | Launch eAuthentication | Launched June 1, 2016 with the re-release of Get Transcript |
| 3 | Implement Google Analytics Coverage on WMR, WMAR, eAuth | Added to eAuthentication April 3, 2016 |
| 4 | Implement updated ForeSee survey | Completed Q1 FY 2016 |
| 5 | Launch Taxpayer Digital Communications | First pilot project to roll out in Q1 FY 17 |
| 6 | Institute Mobile Responsive Design on targeted web pages | Q4 FY17 |
| 7 | Launch Online Payment Agreement | TBD |
| 8 | Email confirmations for Direct Pay and EFTPS | Q1 FY 17 |
| 9 | Spanish version for Direct Pay | TBD |
NOTE: All milestones are dependent upon budget and resources allocations being available
In Q1 FY17, IRS will continue to monitor the security, performance, and user experience of eAuthentication and Get Transcript, and continue to make minor fixes to the tools as necessary. IRS also plans to test an initial version of the Online Account application with internal employees, enabling them to see any balances due and link to payment and payment agreement functionality. Q1 FY17 will also see the launch of the first pilot use case of the Taxpayer Digitial Communications platform.
Expand All
Performance Indicators
Online Application Completion Rate
Percentage of service interactions processed electronically
Cost per taxpayer interaction - digital channel
No Data Available
