**GAO-09-514**                      Published: Jun 25, 2009. Publicly Released: Jun 25, 2009.                  

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## Highlights

In its role as the nation's tax collector, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has a demanding responsibility to annually collect trillions of dollars in taxes, process hundreds of millions of tax and information returns, and enforce the nation's tax laws. Since its first audit of IRS's financial statements in fiscal year 1992, GAO has identified a number of weaknesses in IRS's financial management operations. In related reports, GAO has recommended corrective actions to address those weaknesses. Each year, as part of the annual audit of IRS's financial statements, GAO makes recommendations to address any new weaknesses identified and follows up on the status of IRS's efforts to address the weaknesses GAO identified in previous years' audits. The purpose of this report is to (1) provide the status of audit recommendations and actions needed to fully address them and (2) demonstrate how the recommendations relate to control activities central to IRS's mission and goals.

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## Topics

Auditing and Financial Management

AccountabilityAccounting proceduresFinancial managementFinancial management systemsFinancial recordsFinancial statement auditsFinancial statementsFormsInternal controlsRecordsReporting requirementsTax information confidentialityTax refundsTax return auditsTaxpayersVoluntary complianceAgency missions