
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, December 2, 1993                   TAG: 9312020132
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A2   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

IRS SHIFTS EMPHASIS OF EFFORTS

As part of what it calls the most sweeping overhaul of income-tax processing in more than 40 years, the Internal Revenue Service announced plans Wednesday to phase out the handling of returns at five sites, affecting several thousand workers.

At the same time, the agency will create 23 "one-stop" customer service centers to respond to taxpayer questions about tax law, take orders for forms and resolve disputes about how much is owed.

The savings from this consolidation, which the service said could be achieved without layoffs, will be "reinvested" to improve lagging compliance with a goal of cutting what it calls the tax gap by $50 billion a year.

This gap - the difference between what is owed and what is collected, not counting illegal activity - has jumped 35 percent, to about $119 billion, in five years.

"We must change the way we conduct the business of tax administration," Commissioner Margaret Milner Richardson said. "Our voluntary compliance rate, at around 82 percent, is simply not acceptable."

The Brookhaven, N.Y., operation, one of the 10 sites where the IRS processes returns, will be converted into one of the 23 customer-service centers, officials said. It will also check compliance and perhaps do other work, but it will have what one official called a significant drop in a work force that now peaks at about 4,950 in the filing season.

The other centers to which taxpayers will no longer send returns are in Philadelphia; Andover, Mass.; Atlanta; and Fresno, Calif.

Custom service centers will be set up at the 10 present and former processing centers, and also in Richmond; Baltimore; Buffalo; Cleveland; Dallas; Denver; Indianapolis; Jacksonville, Fla.; Nashville; Pittsburgh; Portland, Ore.; St. Louis; and Seattle.

Memo: shorter version ran in the Metro edition.

by CNB