2nd Annual IRS Research Conference - Some Observations and Insights

Statistics of Income Bulletin, Summer, 2003

Over 230 people attended this year's IRS Research Conference at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, DC, on June 10-11. Attendees included IRS employees, employees from other Government agencies (including the General Accounting Office, the Census Bureau, the Social Security Administration, Treasury, and the Bureau of Economic Analysis), tax professionals, academics, and consultants. There were also tax administrators from Canada, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. The conference was covered by reporters from the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Bureau of National Affairs (BNA), and Tax Notes.

Mark Mazur, Director of Research, Analysis, and Statistics, opened the conference and thanked Eric Toder, Director of the Office of Research, for taking the leadership role in gathering moderators and putting a fantastic program together. Mark was followed by Commissioner Everson who reiterated the importance of research in making solid IRS decisions based on factual data. Mr. Everson stressed his commitment to develop and improve measures of taxpayer compliance through the National Research Program. He emphasized that compliance is the ultimate goal of IRS activities and that improved taxpayer service and better enforcement are vital in meeting IRS objectives.

The first session of the conference, "Implications of Technology and Demographic Trends for Tax Administration," was moderated by Joel Friedman from the IRS Wage & Investment (W&I) Division. The three presenters were from the IRS W&I Division. Gus Faucher from Economy.com was the discussant for this section and did an outstanding job of illustrating common themes from all three papers.

The topic of the second session was "Research on Benefits of Tax Simplification." This session was moderated by Tom Beers from the IRS Taxpayer Advocate Service office. Nina Olson, the IRS Taxpayer Advocate, was discussant for the three papers presented in this session. She gave her personal view of the some of the complex features of the Federal income tax.

The third session, "Measuring and Improving Voluntary Compliance," was moderated by Debbie King, Director of Research in Criminal Investigation. The final paper in this session, "Trends as Changes in Variance: The Case of Tax Noncompliance," was presented by Kim Bloomquist of the National Headquarters Office of Research.

The fourth session was entitled "Strategies for Dealing with Evasion by High-Income Individuals and Corporations." This session was organized by Anne Steuer and moderated by Alex Turk, both from the IRS Small Business/Self-Employed (SB/SE) Division. The discussant for the three papers presented was Susan Nelson from the Office of Tax Analysis, U.S. Treasury Department.

The fifth session, "Administering Social Programs Through the Tax System," was moderated by Robert Brown from the National Research Program.

The last session, "Global Tax Issues" was moderated by Don McPartland from the IRS Large and Mid-Sized Business (LMSB) Division.

SOI staff among this year's attendees included Janice Coleman, Martha Eller, Valerie Glasker-Muse, Barry Johnson, Joe Koshansky, Ellen Legel, Terry Nuriddin, Tom Petska, Lawrence Sao, Doug Shearer, Mike Strudler, and Mike Weber. SOI staff will also be preparing the 2003 Proceedings volume, Publication 1500, The IRS Research Bulletin, Recent IRS Research on Tax Administration and Compliance, which will be available in the fall. Selected papers have already been posted on the IRS website through www.irs.gov on the Tax Stats portion under "Papers," "2003 IRS Research Conference." The papers presented will also be posted on the Servicewide Research Council (SRC) website.