CHANGES ANNOUNCED TO IRS CORRESPONDENCE:

A report released Thursday by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration revealed that during walkthroughs at IRS tax processing centers in fiscal year 2022, IRS employees told TIGTA that their managers, whose full names and office phone numbers appeared on manual correspondence, were being contacted on their personal telephone lines or through social media rather than through normal business methods. TIGTA initiated a review to see what actions could be taken to minimize the risk of potential harm to employees whose personal information is used in tax processing correspondence.

In response, the IRS plans to revise IRS employee signatures on the correspondence letters by next month. The IRS also plans to make program changes that will eliminate the use of employees' first names from manually generated correspondence and will provide the appropriate title in its place by June 2023.

"The IRS takes the safety and security of its employees very seriously; however, it is noteworthy that during the course of this review; however, it is noteworthy that during the course of this review, neither conversations with the audit team nor reaching out to the managers whose signatures appear on the Correspondex letters identified anyone who had requested the use of a pseudonym or reported threatening or harassing contacts to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, which is the protocol for such incidents," wrote Kenneth Corbin, commissioner of the IRS's Wage and Investment Division, in response to the report.