department of revenue tax discovery program action steps to

FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
The DOR also prepares monthly internal production reports
portraying each revenue agent’s assessment activity including the
dollars he or she assessed and number of cases each agent handled.
DOR managers could not produce reports showing any of the key
measures listed on the previous page. Additionally, for the statistics
shown in Table 1, the department had no further break out of the data
by types of self-employed businesses being assessed, or by the types
and locations of businesses failing to withhold wage tax on City
residents, which they employed. Such information might be useful
for better focusing discovery efforts, including identifying industries
or classes of taxpayers to target with educational materials.
Recommendation
In our opinion, the reports prepared by the DOR are good, as they
provide DOR management with a sense of overall staff
productivity. Nonetheless, they fall short of supplying
management with specific details about the characteristics of the
businesses or individuals that are being assessed. Additionally,
and perhaps even more importantly, the reports fail to provide
managers with a sense of how operationally effective and efficient
the department really is.
We recommend that DOR management consider implementing a
system that, in addition to monitoring overall productivity, focuses on the
results. Instead of just monitoring the dollar value of assessments,
consider keeping an eye on the percentage of the assessments not abated,
or the percentage of non-filers contacted that are subsequently
issued a notice of assessment [3608.18].
DOR management should also think about designing tax discovery
initiatives that flow out of a strategic plan and are tied to specific
goals. The department should attach meaningful performance
measures to each tax discovery initiative and continually evaluate
the success or failure of meeting the goals [3608.19].
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