TIGTA Finds Issues With IRS Microfilmed Records
TIGTA Finds Issues With IRS Microfilmed Records
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration identified millions of taxpayer's records lost by the IRS. I don't think anyone is shocked by this anymore.
The fact that the IRS is still using microfilm to store records is probably the most shocking part of the report. Microfilm as a form of storing records is decades old and extremely difficult to retrieve records timely and efficiently.
The report indicates that these records were shipped from the Fresno, California processing center to the Kansas City processing center. All of the cartridges for fiscal 2010 are missing during the shipment and over 8,500 other microfilm cartridges from fiscal 2018 and 2018 are missing too.
Each cartridge holds about 2,000 pages of records; therefore, millions of records are either gone forever or will need to be tracked down. I am not shocked by this revelation since the IRS has already reported shredding millions of records during the pandemic.
The IRS blames the issue loss of experienced staff and the pandemic. TIGTA issued 13 recommendations and the IRS agreed with all but two of them.
The following photo shows part of the microfilm storage room at the Ogden, Utah processing facility.
As you can see, finding someone’s tax record in that room “might” be more difficult than finding it stored in another more appropriate manner.
The IRS does indicate they are phasing out the use of using microfilm, but in our opinion, this is about 10-20 years too late.