Tax Notes Today reported that Sharyn Fisk, director of the IRS Office of Professional Responsibility, told participants in the American Bar Association Section of Taxation virtual meeting that the IRS expects to open up a fully electronic system for filing Powers of Attorney with the agency by July.[1]

Advisers have found a number of IRS processes to have slowed dramatically due to operational issues at the IRS during the pandemic.  This slowdown has impacted how quickly the IRS is able to process and record power of attorneys authorizing CPAs, EAs and attorneys to deal with the IRS on behalf of taxpayers. 

The IRS had already rolled out a program that allowed practitioners to submit the forms online and use digital signatures, but the process has continued to require the IRS to manually process each one of the forms in order to update the centralized authorization file (CAF).  The update of the CAF is necessary before IRS employees can see that the party has a power of attorney on file.

The article describes how the new program, with a rollout date pegged for July per Ms. Fisk, will help speed the processing:

To help mitigate those problems, the IRS has been preparing a portal dubbed Tax Pro Account, which will allow for the electronic submission of online equivalents of forms 2848 and 8821. The account will feature a “dedicated interface for tax professionals” and will integrate with taxpayers’ online accounts, Fisk said.

The accounts will also allow for real-time processing with the CAF unit, Fisk continued. “There is no person at the other end that is going to look at that online authorization and manually process it; it will write directly to the CAF unit — barring if the system is down for updates or any other catastrophic electrical, wi-fi outage,” she said.[2]

[1] Johnathan Curry, “Third-Party Authorization Web Portal for Tax Pros Coming Soon,” Tax Notes Today Federal, May 17, 2021, https://www.taxnotes.com/tax-notes-today-federal/personnel-people-biographies/third-party-authorization-web-portal-tax-pros-coming-soon/2021/05/17/5s7ws (retrieved May 16, 2021, subscription required)

[2] Johnathan Curry, “Third-Party Authorization Web Portal for Tax Pros Coming Soon,” Tax Notes Today Federal, May 17, 2021