irs

The IRS shortchanged taxpayers $1.2 million because they failed to address outdated computer systems, according to a report published by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA).

Despite previous warning, the IRS failed to update computer program changes that were brought to their attention. After an extensive evaluation, TIGTA discovered multiple employee and processing errors within the IRS.

As a result of these errors, The IRS doled out $1.2 million less in a property tax credit than taxpayers were owed. As the report notes:

“The IRS incorrectly limited the Property Credit on 731 tax returns processed as of April 28, 2016, which caused these taxpayers to receive approximately $1.2 million less in credits than they were entitled to receive.”

Despite previous warning, TIGTA also found that computer programming errors are still causing some direct deposits to not convert to a paper check as required. As TIGTA noted:

“Our analysis of the 86 million deposit requests identified 5,605 deposit attempts totaling approximately $9.2 million that did not convert to a paper check as required.”

This is not an isolated incident. As the report notes, The IRS did not establish adequate processes to ensure that required documentation was associated and reviewed before processing claims and allowing credits:

“Our review also identified that employee errors resulting from the manual processing of these claims further delayed some taxpayer refunds. For example, TIGTA’s review of 6,300 electronically filed tax returns and 356 paper tax returns with Health Coverage Tax Credit claims totaling more than $20.8 million that were processed as of April 28, 2016, identified 450 (6.8 percent) returns that had a processing error.”

The IRS has proven itself to be inept with technology.  A 2015 report found that the agency was unable to upgrade all of its Windows workstations by the proper deadlines. In addition to this critical error, the IRS had not accounted for the location or migration status of approximately 1,300 workstations and upgraded only about one-half of its Windows servers in a five year time span. A separate report from 2016 found that the IRS wasted $12 million on an unusable email system because they purchased it without completing the required and necessary cost analysis.