IRS Publish Customer Service Performance Standards

1. As part of its participation in the National Performance Review, IRS
should publish customer service performance standards, to include the
following examples.

--A refund due on your paper return will be mailed within 40 days; a
refund due on your electronic return will be mailed within 21 days when
you request a check, or sent within 14 days when you specify direct
deposit.

--Our goal is to resolve your account inquires in a single contact; if
you have a repeat problem you can contact the Problem Resolution Office,
which will resolve the problem in an average of 21 days.

--When you provide sufficient and correct information to an IRS tax
assistor and get an incorrect answer, we will cancel related penalties.

--Let us know where our tax forms or instructions are confusing or
difficult--by 1995, we plan to boost the clarity of tax forms and
instructions so that 90 percent of individual returns are error-free.

The publication of these service performance standards will represent
another step on the part of IRS toward a customer-driven operation. IRS
plans to measure performance against these and other standards and seek
continuing customer feedback on the importance of particular areas of
service. IRS has a broader, aggressive effort to get customer inputs to
measure the value added by its full set of initiatives.