Nina E. Olson

Nina E. Olson
Nationality	American
Education	Bryn Mawr
Title	Taxpayer Advocate

Nina E. Olson is the United States Taxpayer Advocate, and head of the Office of the Taxpayer Advocate, a government office dedicated to helping taxpayers solve their problems with the Internal Revenue Service.

National Taxpayer Advocate duties

Olson is the only Internal Revenue Service (IRS) employee authorized to make legislative proposals directly to the United States Congress. Twice a year, she identifies the top problems taxpayers face to the IRS and Congress, and analyses how the IRS can ameliorate those problems. "No one in the treasury department and no IRS employees, including the Commissioner of Revenue and anyone from the Office of Management and Budget, can see the report before I deliver it to Congress," Olson says, "I am truly an independent voice inside the IRS."

In 2014 Olson predicted that the 2015 "filing season is going to be the worst filing season since I’ve been the National Taxpayer Advocate; I’d love to be proved wrong, but I think it will rival the 1985 filing season when returns disappeared." According to an article in January 2015 in Politico the annual report of the Taxpayer Advocate to Congress, IRS service is deteriorating to unprecedented poor levels in all aspects of its work, mainly in pre-filing and filing activities but also in its enforcement activities. Congress has removed 17 percent from the IRS budget since fiscal 2010 when adjusted for inflation while the agency is dealing with more tax returns than ever before. Each year the IRS answers phone calls from about 100 million people, and in 2015 they are also implementing Obamacare.

External links

• http://www.taxpayeradvocate.irs.gov/Media-Resources/National-Taxpayer-Advocate-Bio