Revised Innocent Spouse Form Now Available
Jul 5th, 2007 by Afiya
| WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service today announced a redesigned Form 8857, Request for Innocent Spouse Relief, that will help reduce follow up questions and reduce the burden on taxpayers.
The form will ask more questions initially, but collecting critical information early in the process will mean faster processing of the request. The new design will eliminate an estimated 30,000 follow-up letters annually. The result will be a reduced burden and quicker answer for taxpayers and less cost for the government. The form was revised based on suggestions from an IRS process improvement team led by the Office of Taxpayer Burden Reduction. When a taxpayer files a joint return, both spouses are jointly and individually responsible for the tax. Innocent Spouse relief provides an opportunity for a spouse to be relieved from the joint debt under certain circumstances. If one taxpayer believes that only his or her spouse or former spouse who should be responsible for the tax, the taxpayer can request relief from the tax liability. The redesigned form also will be easier to understand and to complete and will help educate taxpayers about the process. Previously, the questionnaire was separate from the form. A line-by-line analysis also resulted in a reduction in the number of questions asked of taxpayers. See Tax Information for Innocent Spouses on the IRS Web site for more. Thank you for subscribing to the IRS Newswire, an IRS e-mail service. If you know someone who might want to subscribe to this mailing list, please forward this message to them and they can go to the Subscription page on the IRS Web site to subscribe. This message was distributed automatically from the mailing list IRS Newswire. Please Do Not Reply To This Message. To unsubscribe from this list, send a blank email to Unsubscribe To subscribe to or unsubscribe from another list, please go to the e-News Subscriptions page on the IRS Web site. |
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