For anyone who has not yet read the Internal Revenue Service Strategic Plan FY 2018-2022, this is a must read for every tax professional and taxpayer this year. While the IRS Strategic Plan opens with the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, it also reminds you that the Tax Cuts And Jobs Act is the most significant revision of the U.S. Tax Code in more than 30 years.

The report states that the new law will require extensive administrative work – updates to 140 computer systems and 450+ tax forms – for the IRS in calendar years 2018 and 2019. The report also states “providing service to taxpayers is a vital part of the IRS mission, and helping taxpayers voluntarily comply with the law strengthens our tax system.”

The IRS Has Six Strategic Goals

1. Empower and enable all taxpayers to meet their tax obligations.
2. Protect the integrity of the tax system encouraging compliance through administrating and enforcing the tax code.
3. Collaborate with external partners proactively to improve tax administration.
4. Cultivate a well-equipped, diverse, flexible and engaged workforce.
5. Advance data access, usability and analytics to inform decision-making and improve operational outcomes.
6. Drive increased agility, efficiency, effectiveness and security in IRS operations.

The IRS report goes on to remind readers the 16^th Amendment to the United States Constitution.  In 1913, Wyoming ratified the 16^th Amendment, providing the three-quarters majority of states necessary to amend the Constitution. The 16^th Amendment gave the U.S. Congress the authority to enact an income tax.

What is not mentioned in this report that came out later in 2018 was the IRS investment in analytics. On September 27, 2018 the IRS entered into a contract with Palantir Technologies, Palo Alto, CA to handle the task of data assimilation. The contract with Palantir is to provide hardware, software and training to IRS employees to capture, curate, store, search, share, transfer, perform deconfliction, analyze and visualize large amounts of disparate structured and unstructured data.”

This large amount of data information has the promise of meaningfully linking tens of millions of tax returns, information returns, bank and credit card transactions, phone records and social media posts. It will be able to flag a person who shows low annual income but whose data indicates otherwise. It will also flag those citizens who are moving money offshore but spending on U.S. credit cards. This new data access tool for the IRS will provide them the opportunity to generate leads for the IRS investigators, and identify schemes to uncover tax fraud and money laundering activities.

Click On The Link Below To View The Report:

Internal Revenue Service Strategic Plan FY 2018-2022