"In recent years, the IRS has made significant progress in improving service," IRS Commissioner Mark W. Everson said. "While the agency's commitment to service continues, the IRS must now sharpen the focus on enforcement."

The strategic plan supports the agency's key enforcement priorities:

• Discourage and deter non-compliance, with emphasis on corrosive activity by corporations, high income individual taxpayers and other contributors to the tax gap.
• Assure that attorneys, accountants and other tax practitioners adhere to professional standards and follow the law.
• Detect and deter domestic and offshore-based tax and financial criminal activity.
• Discourage and deter non-compliance within tax-exempt and government entities and misuse of such entities by third parties for tax avoidance and other unintended purposes.

Everson emphasized that IRS enforcement programs must rest on a sound foundation of taxpayer rights.

The strategic plan's third priority is to improve the efficiency of the tax administration system through modernization efforts that build upon the success of the e-file program and other recently introduced electronic tools for individual and business taxpayers. In addition to its emphasis on technological improvements, the modernization portion of the plan also focuses on implementation of streamlined business processes, productive work environments and security upgrades.

The plan was reviewed and approved by the IRS Oversight Board, which was created by the IRS Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998 to oversee the tax agency. A majority of the board's members are from the private sector.

"This is a balanced plan. It will help the IRS to continue to build on its customer service successes while addressing troubling deficiencies in enforcement and business systems modernization that the board has previously noted in both its annual and budget reports," IRS Oversight Board Chair Nancy Killefer said.

The IRS also received feedback from other groups, including the IRS Advisory Council, the Information Reporting Program Advisory Committee and the Federation of Tax Administrators.

The full text of the IRS strategic plan is available on the IRS Web site at http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-utl/strategic_plan_05-09.pdf.