12 signs you are spending too much time with the IRS

[Arthur Rubin]

For any US tax practitioners who need to spend more time here:

1. You can’t get the IRS hold music out of your mind
2. You get the same IRS employee on the phone again
....
For the rest, see the Accounting Today article.

[AndyK]

From the last line (or so) of the article:

In the age of online customer service, we should be able to get our tax information online (in a readable format) and communicate/interact with our tax administrator electronically.

Unfortunately, (First-hand knowledge as an es-IRS employee), the Service is obsessive about privacy. I was involved in some of the earlier e-file projects and all of the good ideas we had were nixed due to potential vulnerabilities. After all, why do you think you can't e-file directly from your home/work computer without going through an intermediary?

I even had to use a special, government-issue modem to estavlish a VPN connection when working from outside my office.

Until the day comes that the Internet is totally secure, the IRS will be one of the last federal agencies to move into the 21st century.

Then again, just consider a Washington Post headline: "IRS E-File Hacked. 200 Million Citizen's Records Compromised"