The Nation - News from July 14, 1988

Nearly half of the letters the Internal Revenue Service sent to taxpayers in a 2-month period contained incorrect or unclear information, a congressional study said. The IRS fared slightly better with its responses to telephone queries, with workers answering questions correctly 64% of the time, according to the General Accounting Office. To assess the accuracy of letters sent to taxpayers, the GAO examined 718 written responses prepared by examiners in Philadelphia, Fresno and Kansas City. The congressional watchdog agency found that 31% of the letters handled between May 4 and July 31, 1987, contained critical errors and another 16% gave taxpayers unclear or incomplete information. Although the survey was based on IRS correspondence in three parts of the country, the agency acknowledged that the results represented an accurate picture of its nationwide performance.