Relationship verification for Power of Attorney (POA)/Tax Information Authorization (TIA) relationship requests September 2018 Tax News

In last month’s Tax News we mentioned some things you can do to ensure a smooth process when submitting POA relationship requests. This month, we provide additional information about the post-submission process for both POAs and TIAs.

Our primary goal has always been to protect taxpayers’ confidential information. For this reason, we verify all new POA and TIA relationship requests. If we are unable to verify the relationship during our initial processing, your client may receive a letter requesting they contact us to authorize the relationship.

If we send a letter to your client, you will also receive a letter from us informing you that the request is on hold and your client has 45 days to respond. Additionally, we will call you to let you know we have contacted your client as part of the relationship verification process.

If you receive this letter and/or a call from us, we encourage you to reach out to your client and advise them they need to contact us and authorize the relationship. This will help expedite the process and reduce the overall processing timeframe.

If the taxpayer:

• Contacts us and authorizes the relationship, the relationship will become active
• Contacts us and denies the relationship, we will reject the POA/TIA relationship request
• Does not contact us within 45 days, we will reject the POA/TIA relationship request

We will send a letter to the taxpayer informing them the relationship has been authorized or denied.

We understand that this added layer of security may seem burdensome. Given the environment we all work in today and the extent of online data theft, we feel this is a necessary step to ensure taxpayers’ confidential information remains safe, secure, and is only disclosed to authorized users.