Garbage In, Garbage Out: The Late Unlamented Service Center Closings

J. Russell George, Inspector General for Tax Administration, recently revealed that last year's unsuccessful plan to close 68 IRS Service Centers was based on faulty data. George said that an independent contractor developed a model based on five criteria. The model itself, George said, was satisfactory, but some of the data used was incomplete, inaccurate, outdated or some combination of the three.

This result certainly will not inspire confidence in the new plan, presently on hold, to have independent contractors collect past-due taxes.

A similar story is available on the Web CPA website at http://www.webcpa.com/article.cfm?articleid=19660.