SB/SE plays a critical role in administering the tax laws as passed by Congress, educating and assisting taxpayers and tax professionals who want to comply, and enforcing the law for those who don’t.
Mission
Help taxpayers comply and enforce the law
- Reporting compliance – Support the accurate reporting of taxes for more than 160 million individual tax returns; around 1 million small business entities; and more than 38 million employment, excise, estate and gift tax returns filed each year.
- Payment compliance – Manage unpaid taxes, penalties and interest of $500 billion.
- Filing compliance – Address taxpayers that did not file their taxes on time with an estimated tax gap of $60 billion.
- Penalties & interest – Administer the IRS penalty and interest programs to encourage timely payment of liabilities.
- Administer legislation – Lead implementation and administration of complex, large scale legislation such as the Opportunity Zone and Qualified Business Income Deduction provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.
- Enforce requirements of the Bank Secrecy Act on behalf of FinCEN to prevent financial crimes such as money laundering and terrorist financing while helping avert criminal acts including human trafficking and narcotics trade.
- Outreach and education – Engage with taxpayers, tax professionals and stakeholder groups to gather feedback, share information and promote resources for small businesses and individuals. This includes participating in public events such as the Nationwide Tax Forums.
Detect and address tax non-compliance, fraud and abuse
In fiscal year 2024 SB/SE assessed nearly $19 billion and collected more than $84 billion in taxes that would not have otherwise been reported or paid:
- Over $7.5 billion in unreported tax recommended by Automated Underreporter.
- $82 million in unreported tax recommended by Automated Substitute for Return.
- Over $3 billion in underreported tax recommended by Correspondence Examination.
- $7.4 billion in additional tax recommended and $8 billion in tax collected by highly trained field investigators addressing the most complex and egregious non-compliance.
- Over $72 billion of past due balances collected by Campus Collection and nearly $4 billion collected from reminder notices and other Collection activities.
- More than 125 cases referred to criminal investigation.
- More than 160 referrals to Counsel for DOJ civil action.
- Supported development of over 750 promoter investigations and 5,000 ongoing client investigations.
Provide automated tools for taxpayers to support compliance
SB/SE leverages several digital self-service options for individuals, businesses, and tax professionals to access information, make payments, establish payment plans, respond to notices, and resolve other tax issues.
- In 2024, 300,000 taxpayers received support through live chats with SB/SE employees, 2.6 million new payment plans were established by taxpayers electronically, and 2.2 million taxpayers were assisted by chat bots, leading to 940,000 self-servicing interactions to resolve account issues. In total, more than 26 million taxpayer interactions have been managed by Collection voice bots.