The National Taxpayer Advocate and the IRS
Olson’s primary weapon is the annual reports that her office releases each January. They can quickly draw public attention to the often-obscure practices of an agency that remains mysterious to many Americans. Designed to prod the IRS into better service to the public, Congress mandated that the Secretary of the Treasury rather than the IRS commissioner appoint the Advocate. This has led to a number of interesting changes in the way the IRS does business.
One such change occurred just this past January. In a recent interview on CNN’s American Morning, Olson related how her attempts to encourage the agency to stop freezing the tax refunds of certain taxpayers without giving them notice, as well as the reasons why they were being withheld, met with little success. Once she made this public through her annual report however, public outcry from Congress and other quarters forced the agency to comply with her suggestions in short order.
There have been other important changes as well.
A decade ago, the agency responded to only sixty percent of the calls made to the IRS by taxpayers. Now that number stands at eighty-five percent. This figure, Olson noted, puts them in line with rates of response in the private sector. Olson is one who is no stranger to looking out for taxpayers. Before holding her current post, she was a practicing tax attorney who taught at several law schools.
She was also the founder and Executive Director of the Community Tax Law Project, the first taxpayer clinic in the country devoted to low-income taxpayers. So if you ever feel a little stressed about that tax return you’re about to send and the refund that (hopefully) will come with it, you’ll be relieved to remember that American taxpayers do have someone in their corner, and her name is Nina Olson, National Taxpayer Advocate.
