The IRS issued Fact Sheet 2023-18 yesterday. The stated goal is that the IRS will during the 2024 and 2025 tax filing seasons make dramatic improvements to their technology process.
Currently, it is a slog trying to communicate with the IRS. If you mail a letter to them, it can take them months to respond. We found during the pandemic that the IRS even shredded countless thousands or millions of paper documents that they could not process.
During the 2024 tax season, it appears that about 94% of taxpayers will not need to mail anything to the IRS including responding to notices. Instead, they will be allowed to upload all documents directly online to the IRS. However, if you still would like to submit paper returns or correspondence that will be allowed too.
Additional tax forms will be allowed to be filed electronically and at least 20 of the most used non-tax forms will be in a “friendly” mobile format.
During the 2025 tax season at least another 150 non-tax forms will be available in a mobile friendly format.
All paper-filed tax and information returns will be digitized. This will allow the IRS to be more efficient in responding to questions on these returns. Currently, if those returns are not in their system digitally, then it takes them much longer to track them down and respond.
Hopefully the IRS will actually achieve their goals. I know as a preparer I will be much more efficient dealing with the IRS digitally than via mail or phone calls. I look forward to seeing how it turns out.
