The IRS announced this week that the agency has achieved – ahead of schedule – the first goal of its Paperless Processing Initiative, which is to allow taxpayers to respond online to notices and correspondence with the Federal agency.
The agency said it accomplished that initial goal three months ahead of plan.
In February of this year, IRS created the ability for taxpayers to submit nine different notices through a document upload tool that the agency has made available to the public. Prior to the 2023 tax filing season, taxpayers were only able to respond to those notices by regular mail.
IRS said it has “now achieved the ability to digitally respond to all notices,” adding that as of late October, the agency “received more than 35,000 responses to notices via the online tool.”
As a result, the agency estimates that more than 94 percent of taxpayers will no longer need to send paper documents via mail to the IRS – saving time for the agency and speeding up its processes.
“Taxpayers use these non-tax forms to request or submit information on a range of topics, including identity theft and proof of eligibility for key credits and deductions to help working Americans,” IRS said. “Reaching this milestone will enable up to 125 million paper documents per year to be submitted digitally. Taxpayers who want to submit paper returns and correspondence may continue to do so,” the agency said.
The agency’s Paperless Processing Initiative is part of broad modernization efforts being implemented by IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel to speed up the agency’s business processes while implementing new tech capabilities.
The IRS said it is aiming at reaching the second goal of the initiative by the start of the 2024 filing season – to give taxpayers the option to “to e-file 20 additional tax forms, enabling up to four million additional tax documents to be digitally filed every year.”
