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IRS Examination Selection: IRS Should Strengthen Internal Controls for Exempt Organization Selection

GAO-15-753T Published: Jul 23, 2015. Publicly Released: Jul 23, 2015.
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Highlights

What GAO Found

The Exempt Organizations (EO) unit within the Tax Exempt and Government Entities (TE/GE) division at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) reviews organizations' applications for tax-exempt status to determine whether to grant status and oversees existing exempt organizations' compliance with the tax code. To identify exempt organizations for possible examination, EO uses a variety of information sources: for example, EO receives referrals of exempt organization noncompliance from third parties, such as the public, and other parts of IRS.

EO uses various controls intended to help it select exempt organizations for examination, in an effort to adhere to TE/GE's mission of “applying the tax law with integrity and fairness to all.” For example, EO maintains well-documented procedures for several examination selection processes in the Internal Revenue Manual (IRM), IRS's primary, official source of instructions to staff; staff can deviate from procedures that are included in the IRM only with executive management approval. In focus groups, EO staff generally told GAO that these procedures were valuable tools to help them administer the tax law.

However, there are several areas where EO's controls were not well designed or implemented. The control deficiencies GAO found increase the risk that EO could select organizations for examination in an unfair manner—for example, based on an organization's religious, educational, political, or other views. Examples of internal control deficiencies GAO found include the following:

Staff could deviate from procedures for some selection processes without executive management approval. GAO found that procedures for some processes—such as applying selection criteria to organizations under consideration for review—are not included in the IRM, as required by IRS policy. As a result, staff are not required to obtain executive management approval to deviate from these procedures. This increases the risk of unfair selection of organizations' returns for examination.

EO management does not consistently monitor selection decisions. GAO found that IRS does not consistently monitor examinations and database files to ensure that selection decisions are documented and approved, to help ensure fairness. GAO's review of examination files found that approval of some selection decisions was not documented, as required by EO procedures. For example, GAO's analysis of a sample of files suggests that an estimated 12 to 34 percent of cases where staff initially selected an organization for examination, but ultimately decided not to perform the examination, were missing the indication of management approval of the final decision, as required in the IRM. Continuous monitoring is an element of internal control; EO management has not been conducting sufficient monitoring to ensure that required approvals were taking place.

Why GAO Did This Study

This testimony summarizes the information contained in GAO's July 2015 report, entitled IRS Examination Selection: Internal Controls for Exempt Organization Selection Should Be Strengthened (GAO-15-514).

For more information, contact James R. McTigue, Jr. at (202) 512-9110 or mctiguej@gao.gov.

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Topics

DatabasesInternal controlsMonitoringPolitical activitiesStandardsTax exempt organizationsTax exempt statusTax lawWebsitesCompliance oversight