IRS Notices Will Now be in “English”

One of the most painful part of being a CPA was responding to IRS notices.  Most of these notices were written in such a way that even a professional tax advisor had problems in determining exactly what the IRS wanted or needed to be done.

The IRS has now announced that it is in the process of revising all of its correspondence to include a plain language explanation of the nature of each notice and will state the actual action that the taxpayer must take in addressing the correspondence.  Many of these letters or notices can be handled without having to call, write or visit an IRS office.

A listing of these redesigned notices and letters, including the number and description are located on the IRS website here.

I am not why it has taken so long to finally do this on the part of the IRS (probably something to do with their antiquated computer system), but it is long overdue and I look forward to see if it really is in “English”.

 Paul Neiffer, CPA