IRS expands online accounts, provides enforcement update

The IRS expanded the tax pro account, which now includes the ability to view individual and business taxpayer payments, and made other digital improvements, the agency said, as part of the quarterly update to its strategic operating plan.

Other upgrades to the tax pro account include:

• A virtual assistant that allows tax professionals to resolve tax issues, with the ability to escalate to live chat for help with collection-related issues.
• The ability to view and act on behalf of individual taxpayers to set up and revise payment plans.
• The ability to make up to five same-day payments on behalf of authorized clients using a checking or savings account.

The IRS announced the upgrades last week in news release IR-2024-310.

Business tax account upgrades

The IRS expanded the features of its business tax account, making it available to C corporations, which the IRS said extends the tool’s reach to millions of business entities.

Upgrades to the business tax account include:

• The ability of authorized individuals of C corporations and S corporations who can legally act on behalf of their corporation to view and pay tax balances and federal tax deposits. 
• A feature that helps to speed up the lending process by providing sole proprietors and authorized individuals with access to the long-standing IRS income verification express service to approve or reject a tax transcript authorization request from a lending company. 
• The availability of tax returns, account, and most entity transcripts in Spanish.

These changes follow upgrades announced in September that allow business taxpayers to view and submit balance-due payments.

Enforcement update

The IRS said it has recovered $4.7 billion from new initiatives, including over $1.3 billion from high-income, high-wealth individuals who have not paid overdue tax debt or filed tax returns.

Other money collected includes $2.9 billion related to IRS Criminal Investigation work into tax and financial crimes, including drug trafficking, cybercrime, and terrorist financing, and $475 million in proceeds from criminal and civil cases attributed to whistleblower information.

Among high-income nonfilers who have not filed taxes since 2017, the IRS has now collected an initial $292 million from over 28,000 nonfilers, an increase of $120 million since September 2024. These cases involve people who did not file a tax return even though they received between $400,000 and $1 million in income.

IRS leadership

President-elect Donald Trump has announced plans to nominate former Missouri congressman Billy Long as the next IRS commissioner.

Commissioner Danny Werfel’s term ends in 2027, but under Sec. 7803(a)(1)(D), the president can legally fire the IRS commissioner.

— To comment on this article or to suggest an idea for another article, contact Martha Waggoner at Martha.Waggoner@aicpa-cima.com.