I’ve written often about the backlogs and bottlenecks at the IRS.  The fact that millions of taxes are still unprocessed demonstrates the sad state of affairs at this all-important federal agency.

But, I’ve been fairly reticent (unless you were a client who needed us to effect specific services with the IRS) about a key failing at the IRS.

For our firm to represent a taxpayer to negotiate an issue (tax filing, tax shortage, payment plan, etc.), we need to have an executed power of attorney (typically Form 2848).  Obtaining those from our clients is a breeze; after all, our clients are desperate to resolve the IRS issue and the form is straight-forward and completely understandable.

For years, we would be able to fax those form into the IRS, who would then process these forms within five business days.  Then, whenever we called in (and for a 1 year period), the IRS representative could pull up the form and initiate a discussion with us.

A few years ago, we notice that the five business day requirement had flown the coop.  So, we would call the IRS (there is a special telephone system for Enrolled Agents and other certified practitioners) and submit the 2848 to the representatives direct line and begin discussions.  The representative would then submit our form to the Central Authorization File (CAF) unit and our client was covered.  Except after 6 months, we began noticing that the CAF processing seemed to have stopped.  OK.  It didn’t stop- it just took 5 weeks, not 5 days.  So, we were forever faxing in Form 2848 each time we initiated an IRS discussion.

Earlier this year, the IRS announced that we could begin submitted these forms using their secure site.  And, the form would be processed within 5 days.  Folks like me were excited, since the CAF units (Memphis TN and Ogden UT) had been shut down by the pandemic last March- and, since then, it’s never been clear that they were even operating at 50% capacity.  But it turned out this secure site submission worked perfectly well to submit the forms- but processing so that we could speak to any IRS agent… That wasn’t happening.

Yup.  Still no processed powers of attorney after 60 days- forget about 5!   We still didn’t know if the form is lost, rejected, or just delayed.  (And, that’s a problem since the IRS doesn’t want us to submit multiple copies of the form, saying it will screw them up.  Yeah- like they aren’t already.)

Then, new promises were made on 18 July.  Promising to make the process simpler, clearer, and more efficient.

I will be submitting at least two this week.  We’ll see if this is yet another broken promise.

For you-my clients’ sake- I hope it’s for real.

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