WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — IRS has not implemented 31 prior GAO recommendations to improve its performance, but received 11 new ones in Friday’s report.
The GAO found that IRS had completed corrective action on only 20 of the 51 recommendations from prior financial audits and other financial management-related work.
“IRS's corrective action plan was not adequate to reasonably assure that system control deficiencies contributing to a material weakness in unpaid tax assessments would be effectively addressed,” the report, issued on Friday, said.
The IRS deficiencies increase the risk that its “efforts to address numerous control issues affecting the reporting of unpaid assessment amounts… will be hampered,” the report added.
The report said the IRS was still failing to adequately assess unpaid taxes. It lacked effective auditing controls on the accuracy of its penalty assessment.
“This increases the risk of errors in IRS's financial statements, may burden taxpayers who are assessed higher amounts in penalties than they actually owe, or result in lost revenue to the federal government,” the GAO warned.
The IRS even lacked effective review controls to ensure that “taxpayer receipts and information sent from taxpayer assistance centers were received by the intended submission processing centers,” the report said.
Additionally, IRS failed “to reasonably assure that asset purchases were properly recorded in its asset management systems,” it said.
The GAO said IRS has agreed with all 11 of the new recommendations to address the agency’s systematic management failures.
