The ETA needs you.The IRS An abbreviation for the Internal Revenue Service, a federal agency charged with the responsibility of administering and enforcing internal revenue laws. needs tax practitioners help to meet the aggressive electronic filing goals laid out in the Restructuring restructuring - The transformation from one representation form to another at the same relative abstraction level, while preserving the subject system's external behaviour (functionality and semantics). and Reform Act of 1998. That was the message Robert Robert, Henry Martyn 1837-1923. American army engineer and parliamentary authority. He designed the defenses for Washington, D.C., during the Civil War and later wrote Robert's Rules of Order (1876). Noun 1. E. Barr, IRS assistant commissioner for electronic commerce and chief of the Electronic Tax Administration (ETA e·ta n. Symbol  The seventh letter of the Greek alphabet.ETA estimated transmitting ability. ), recently delivered to a group of practitioners in New York City New York City: see New York, city. New York City City (pop., 2000: 8,008,278), southeastern New York, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The largest city in the U.S. . "We clearly cannot be successful in the ETA without the support of the practitioner community" Barr said. He explained that professional tax preparers now complete 50% of tax returns. To achieve the goal of having 80% of all returns electronically filed by the year 2007 (as mandated in the 1998 act), the IRS must persuade practitioners to file all their returns electronically. "The good news is that, although we have challenges ahead, the whole marketplace is moving with tremendous speed toward the new technologies and the ETA is riding that wave," Barr said. As evidence of the electronic trend, Barr pointed to the statistics for the 1999 tax season. The IRS received electronically more than 29 million of the total 125 million returns filed. Overall, the number of electronically filed returns in 1999 increased 19%, and the number of returns electronically filed by practitioners increased 20%, over the prior year. In addition, the IRS collected $1.2 trillion One thousand times one billion, which is 1, followed by 12 zeros, or 10 to the 12th power. See space/time. (mathematics) trillion - In Britain, France, and Germany, 10^18 or a million cubed. In the USA and Canada, 10^12. from employers through the Electronic Federal Tax Payment System (EFTPS EFTPS Electronic Federal Tax Payment System EFTPS Electronic Funds Transfer Payment System ) for fiscal year 1998, an amount which grew by 18% this year. EFTPS, which now accounts for more than 80% of all federal tax deposits, allows businesses to pay their payroll taxes Payroll Tax Tax an employer withholds and/or pays on behalf of their employees based on the wage or salary of the employee. In most countries, including the U.S., both state and federal authorities collect some form of payroll tax. electronically. This season's new options and pilot programs were aimed at creating a completely paperless tax return process, Barr said. The most important developments included an expanded electronic payment option and personal identification number (PIN) pilots. This year, for the first time, the IRS offered taxpayers the option of paying by credit card. Approximately 53,000 tax liabilities were paid using the cards. The IRS also conducted two PIN pilots aimed at eliminating paper signature forms. It mailed postcards with electronic customer numbers to eight million taxpayers. Approximately eight percent (649,576 filers) used the numbers on their returns this year. In another pilot, involving 2,493 tax practitioners, taxpayers were allowed to choose a one-time PIN for their 1998 returns. Using the PINs, the practitioners filed 496,119 returns. What's in store in the year 2000? Barr said the ETA wants to expand payment options by increasing the number of credit card companies that participate in the program. The ETA is also working to increase the number of forms that can be filed electronically. Another goal is to eventually have taxpayers use digital signatures. In the meantime Adv. 1. in the meantime - during the intervening time; "meanwhile I will not think about the problem"; "meantime he was attentive to his other interests"; "in the meantime the police were notified" meantime, meanwhile , however, the ETA plans to increase the number of both individual and practitioner participants in its PIN pilots for the 2000 tax season. |
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