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To: AugustWest who wrote (798)	11/30/1999 9:34:00 AM
From: William F. Wager, Jr.	Respond to of 1285

DJ IRS Launches Secure E-Mail Pilot Program Dow Jones Newswires -- November 29, 1999 By Fowler W. Martin WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--The U.S. Internal Revenue Service said Monday it will shortly begin exchanging confidential taxpayer information by encrypted, secure e-mail with a select group of tax professionals. The pilot project, scheduled to run through September 2000, is a major stride in the agency's plans to improve service to taxpayers, boost its own productivity and meet certain congressionally mandated performance targets. "This is an important step toward our goal of providing electronic access to account information for taxpayers as well as tax professionals," said Bob Barr, assistant IRS commissioner for electronic tax administration. The new e-mail service was requested by the National Association of Enrolled Agents (NAEA), a group representing tax professionals licensed to represent taxpayers in their dealings with the IRS. Such practitioners currently spend a lot of time communicating with the IRS by telephone and conventional mail, a time-consuming and often frustrating process. Switching to e-mail should short-circuit a major part of the work, NAEA executive vice president Janet Bray said. Several hundred NAEA members volunteered to take part in the experiment and the IRS will select 100 of them for the pilot project. Initially, e-mail exchanges will be restricted mainly to questions, answers and other routine exchanges, but Bray said her organization hopes the IRS will soon accept powers of attorney by e-mail and supply transcripts of taxpayer accounts by that method as well. Tax professionals generally must obtain a power of attorney from a taxpayer and present it to the IRS before they can act on a taxpayer's behalf. At present, such documents are usually faxed to the agency and often have to be located before an IRS employee can begin responding to a particular problem. Attaching electronic versions of such documents to e-mail could greatly speed up the process, the NAEA believes. Congress Seeks Increase In Electronic Filings With respect to transcripts, Barr recently said the IRS is working on a system that would deliver partial or complete electronic transcripts of taxpayer accounts to authorized parties within 24 hours. At present, it takes six to eight weeks to get such documents. The IRS plans on using the new e-mail service and related initiatives currently on the drawing boards as a means of encouraging taxpayers and their representatives to file more returns electronically. A significant shift in that direction promises to drastically cuts the IRS's return processing workload, permitting it to redeploy scarce personnel to other tasks - better service, or stiffer enforcement, for instance. At present, taxpayers expecting refunds have a strong incentive to have their returns filed electronically because they get their money faster that way. Balance-due taxpayers, and the professionals who often prepare their returns, need different incentives to encourage them to switch to electronic filing, however. The incentives are important because Congress wants to see 80% of all returns filed electronically by 2007. Even more difficult to hit, Barr said, is an interim goal requiring the IRS to receive electronically 60% of all returns prepared on a computer by 2002. In order to be selected for the e-mail pilot, NAEA members must be deemed by the IRS to be "established electronic return filers with a record of high quality performance and the required system components," an agency press release said. To use the system, participants must also obtain permission and powers of attorney from clients, the IRS said. Test participants can use secure e-mail to request help on notices, account issues or transcripts for either individual or business taxpayers, the IRS said. E-mail can also be used to set up installment agreements for taxpayers who can't immediately pay all the tax they owe, the agency said. Bray said many NAEA members want to participate in the pilot project because it will help them quickly adapt to leading edge technologies and because it will help them market their services. Those participating will presumably be able to promise their clients quicker resolution of tax problems. The new service will use a secure communications technology known as Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) in a system developed for the IRS by VeriSign Inc., of Mountain View, Calif. Participants will be issued passwords that will allow them to obtain the digital certificates needed to gain access to a secure IRS web site. Both questions and answers will take the form of encrypted messages using S/MIME protocol technology supplied by RSA Security Inc., of San Mateo, Calif., the IRS said. "It's an incredible advance," said NAEA's Bray. -By Fowler W. Martin; (202) 862-6616 E-mail skip.martin@dowjones.com