The Internal Revenue Service’s Wage and Investment Division plays a critical role in tax administration. With over 120 million individual tax returns processed annually, the division handles submissions, payments, refunds, and compliance enforcement. Understanding its functions provides insight into how personal taxes are managed in the United States.
Main Responsibilities of the Wage and Investment Division
The Wage and Investment Division has a wide purview across personal taxation. Key duties include processing tax returns, issuing refunds, answering taxpayer inquiries, and pursuing noncompliance cases. Significant resources go towards customer service through call centers and online tools to assist filers.
Tax Return Intake and Issuing Refunds
A core operational function is intake, review, and acceptance of hundreds of millions tax returns each year. Once returns are validated and taxes owed are reconciled, refunds are issued to taxpayers due money back. The volume of submissions and sensitive financial data requires robust systems and security measures.
Taxpayer Assistance Services
Extensive phone and online customer service resources provide needed support to taxpayers. Call centers handle millions of inquiries on tax rules, forms, payments due, refund status and more. The IRS website also has abundant resources to self-serve information and answers.
Enforcement of Noncompliance
The Wage and Investment Division expends considerable effort pursuing taxpayer noncompliance, including underreporting income, claiming excessive deductions or credits, and tax evasion. Both automated processes and manual reviews identify problem returns for further enforcement.
As the gateway for individual income taxes, the IRS’s Wage and Investment Division conducts intake, processing, customer service, payments, and compliance enforcement for over 120 million annual submissions from taxpayers. Resources are vast to handle this complex, sensitive, and critical area of financial administration.