IRS Reaches Out to Corporate Taxpayers

This article highlights a Webcast sponsored by KPMG LLP that discusses the IRS focus on improving its communication with corporate taxpayers around corporate governance, transparency, and tax compliance. According to Steven Miller, commissioner of the IRS Division for Large and Midsize Business, the IRS is concerned about the current inefficient, and perhaps ineffective, relationship between the IRS and large corporate taxpayers.

Miller said the IRS has two choices. The first choice is to keep spending time poring over the returns of large corporations, hunting for material issues that are "at best buried among a plethora of paper" and at worst deliberately hidden. The second choice is to work to gain a better understanding of its client base, and hopefully leverage some corporate government practices that might limit some risk behavior and increase the agency's ability to identify material tax issues.

Miller said the latter path will help the IRS do a better job in assuring they collect the proper amount of tax from corporate taxpayers in the most efficient manner.