Aug 30 -- The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) invites comments to OMB by September 29, 2023 regarding the reinstatement of the Comprehensive Taxpayer Attitude Survey (CTAS).
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) conducts the Comprehensive Taxpayer Attitude Survey as part of the Service-wide effort to maintain a system of balanced organizational performance measures mandated by the IRS Restructuring and Reform Act (RRA) of 1998. This is also a result of Executive Order 12862 that requires all Government agencies to survey their customers. The IRS' office of Research Applied Analytics & Statistics (RAAS) is sponsoring this annual survey (formerly conducted by the IRS Oversight Board) with the objective of better understanding what influences taxpayers' tax compliance, their opinions of the IRS, and their customer service preferences, as well as how these taxpayer views change over time.
In 2020, RAAS received a three-year approval to conduct the Comprehensive Taxpayer Attitude Survey (CTAS), which expires August 31, 2023. In 2023, we are submitting an updated Supporting Statement to reflect changes to the CTAS methodology that will reduce costs, improve data quality and the ability to include hard-to-reach populations while also increasing convenience for respondents. Our new methodology will help us overcome the inherent challenges of relying on random digit dial (RDD) phone surveys and online panel surveys, using enhanced address-based sampling (ABS). We also have streamlined and strengthened the questionnaire by replacing some questions with more relevant questions to improve the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) ability to understand taxpayers’ attitudes, experiences, capabilities, and behaviors to inform tax administration.
The new methodology will continue to rely on phone and online surveys, but will drop RDD and online panels, replacing these ways to reach potential respondents with technology-enabled ABS with dynamic online targeting to solicit respondents by mail and online. CTAS respondents will be able to take the survey at their convenience, in their choice of either English or Spanish, using their preference of an automated interactive voice response (IVR) phone survey, with an option for a live interviewer, if needed, or an online survey. These changes will allow RAAS to continue to more effectively use a data-driven approach to understand customer attitudes and behaviors. Collecting, analyzing, and using customer opinion data is a vital component of IRS’s Balanced Measures Approach, as mandated by the Internal Revenue Service Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998 and Executive Order 12862.
These methodology changes have become necessary, because changing respondent behaviors have made it increasingly difficult to contact hard-to-reach populations, making previous CTAS methods no longer cost-efficient or the most effective way to obtain a representative sample. Previously, CTAS was administered in English-only, with a total sample size of 2,000 split between phone and online respondents. The phone survey was designed to reach lower income adults who were less likely to be internet users and would otherwise be underrepresented in the online survey using the KnowledgePanel.
To address increasing cost and data quality challenges, RAAS' updated approach uses a combination of non-RDD, automated IVR phone surveys to reach non-internet users and non-panel, online surveys using improved methods for contacting hard-to-reach populations and giving users more choices. RAAS aims to provide the most accurate and representative data possible at a significant cost savings over continuing the previous method. Our current vendor has an exclusive partnership with the creator of this approach, which uses random address-based (ABS) sampling with dynamic online targeting to create representative samples, and can target hard-to-reach populations, including the homeless. This approach offers automated phone surveys to those who prefer phone to online surveys and web-based surveys that can be taken using phone or computer. Both survey modes can be taken in English or Spanish and at the respondents’ convenience.
The Comprehensive Taxpayer Attitude Survey (CTAS) began in 1999. The RAAS sponsors this annual survey (formerly conducted by the IRS Oversight Board), which is conducted in August and September of each year. The primary objective of the survey is to capture updated time series data on taxpayers’ tax compliance attitudes, experiences, capabilities, and behaviors, which can be compared to findings from previous surveys, providing insights into any changes in taxpayer views over time, which will provide greater insight into these issues, which are of strategic importance to tax administration.
The results of CTAS are provided up the IRS chain of command to the Commissioner and are shared publicly, including publication in the annual IRS Data Book. Additionally, these results have received significant public interest, with information from the survey being cited regularly in national publications.
The findings from this survey will continue to provide RAAS and IRS with a clear and reliable taxpayer context that informs the Service’s performance of current IRS taxpayer service and enforcement programs designed to improve voluntary compliance and the Service’s proposals for strategic performance measures. The data being tracked includes measures on public attitudes regarding cheating on taxes, trust in the IRS to fairly enforce tax laws, and factors that influence taxpayers to file accurate, timely, and complete returns. Two CTAS measures are Taxpayer First Act Measures: I trust the IRS to help me understand my tax obligations and The percentage of taxpayers satisfied with their personal interactions with the IRS. The results of this survey allow the IRS to understand the impact of its programs on public perception and barriers, motivations, and capabilities taxpayers have that can affect their willingness and ability to meet their tax obligations. For transparency, select aggregate results are published in the annual IRS Data Book, and a more detailed report of survey results is released on the IRS website.
2021 CTAS report:
https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p5296.pdf
IRS submission to OMB:
https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRAViewICR?ref_nbr=202306-1545-004 Click IC List for information collection instrument, View Supporting Statement for technical documentation. Submit comments through this webpage.
FRN:
https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2023-18716 #19
For AEA members wishing to submit comments, "A Primer on How to Respond to Calls for Comment on Federal Data Collections" is available at
https://www.aeaweb.org/content/file?id=5806