Congress is being urged to put together a Taxpayer Bill of Rights. Yesterday, National Taxpayer Advocate, Nina E. Olson, released her annual report to Congress. The report indicates that a combination of expanding workload and decreased funding "is causing the IRS to resort to shortcuts that undermine fundamental taxpayer rights and harm taxpayers - ..."
The report summarizes recommendations made in past reports to create additional taxpayer rights and recommends that the rights be enacted into legislation. Ten (10) taxpayer rights and five (5) taxpayer responsibilities are mentioned. Of interest to many and particularly overseas Americans, are the suggested right to be informed, right to be heard, right to certainty, right to privacy and the right to a fair and just tax system.
Perhaps these suggestions are reiterated in this report due to the inclusion of a discussion relating to the IRS's policy change in the application of key terms of the 2009 Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program more than a year after the application deadline had passed. The report states that the policy change was in contravention of the IRS's written pledge that "under no circumstances will a taxpayer be required to pay a penalty greater than what he would otherwise be liable for under existing statutes."
It is worth having a look at the Press Release which has links to the Executive Summary and the complete report.
