Tax Administration

Opportunities Exist for Improving IRS' Administration of Alien Taxpayer Programs Gao ID: GGD-88-54 April 11, 1988

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO studied the: (1) extent to which legal aliens complied with tax filing requirements; and (2) effectiveness of Internal Revenue Service (IRS) programs aimed at identifying and collecting legal aliens' income taxes.

GAO found that IRS: (1) lacked sufficient information to measure the extent to which legal aliens complied with requirements, or the effectiveness of its compliance efforts; (2) advised aliens of tax requirements, including the need to obtain a tax compliance certificate, through a publication it distributed to aliens as they entered the country; (3) did not monitor these requirements, but relied on aliens to voluntarily comply; (4) did not receive sufficient information from the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) concerning nonresident aliens; (5) did not administer its alien compliance programs according to its procedures; (6) has not designated specific district office personnel to coordinate compliance efforts; (7) used an unrevised and outdated withholding agent contact letter to obtain information regarding some aliens' income; and (8) declined to further investigate 59 GAO-identified cases of possible noncompliance, citing the potential costliness of further efforts.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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