Report: 20 years later, IRS still bungling back taxes
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An audit of the Internal Revenue Service concluded there is a serious problem with its financial reporting software which has persisted for two decades, according to a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report.
Since at least the mid-1990s, the tax agency's software has been unable to attribute taxes received to the accounts of specific taxpayers who owed back taxes. Instead the IRS has employed a labor intensive statistical estimation process to track $9 billion in adjustments during Fiscal Year 2015, the report states.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"Basically, due to limitations in IRS's financial systems and errors in taxpayer accounts, IRS's systems cannot break down total unpaid tax assessments into its component parts (taxes receivable, compliant assessments, write-offs)," GAO Financial Management and Assurance Director Cheryl Clark told the Washington Examiner.