- Published: Thursday, January 9, 2020-
National Taxpayer Advocate releases its annual report to Congress
By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The U.S. National Taxpayer Advocate released Wednesday its Annual Report to Congress for 2019 and called for better customer service, more technology, more resources and more efforts to reduce refund fraud.
The National Taxpayer Advocate is an independent agency within the Internal Revenue Service, to assist taxpayers in resolving their problems with the agency
Among its legislative recommendations is a call for the harmonization of reporting requirements for taxpayers subject to both Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, known as FATCA, and the Foreign Bank Account Report filings, called FBAR. These affect U.S. expats.
As stated in the report to Congress, "many U.S. taxpayers, particularly those living abroad, face increased compliance burdens and costs as a result of FATCA reporting obligations that significantly overlap with the FBAR filing requirements. The IRS has exercised its regulatory authority to eliminate duplicative reporting of assets on Form 8938 if an asset is reported or reflected on certain other timely filed international information returns (e.g., Forms 3520, 3520A, 5471, 8621, 8865, or 8891). It has also provided an exception from the reporting rules for financial accounts held in U.S. territories for bona fide residents of such territories.”
Along with advocating for the simplification of filing of the two reporting regimes, the advocate urged “same country exception for reporting of financial accounts held in the country in which a US taxpayer is a bona fide resident.
According to American Citizens Abroad, the organization urges this treatment and originally proposed it to Congress and the National Taxpayer Advocate in April 2015. The proposal would eliminate bank account reporting by expats living abroad if they banked in the same country in which they lived.
The IRS advocate also proposed providing additional time for taxpayers outside of the United States to request abatement of a math error assessment equal to the time extension allowed in responding to a notice of deficiency.
The advocate noted that “taxpayers living abroad (temporarily or permanently) often require more time to respond to IRS notices than taxpayers living in the United States. Mail delivery takes longer in both directions, in some cases, depending on where the taxpayer is located, substantially longer. In addition, persons temporarily abroad often do not have access to their tax or financial records, making it difficult for them to respond immediately. “
American Citizens Abroad announced that will be meeting with the National Taxpayer Advocate to review current tax compliancy issues for Americans living and working overseas.
The full National Taxpayer Advocate Services report is available at the government site.
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