Audio] good afternoon. Im harrison smith, director of the enterprise digital team at the Internal Revenue service. Im excited to be here today at 22nd technologies, with one of six sites on multiple partners scanning forms for us. It is my great honor to induce introduce janet yellen, sworn in as the secretary of the treasury engine january of 2000 21, the first person in American History to have led the council of economic advisers and the treasury department. She began her federal career in 1976 at the reserve board and in 1980 she joined the faculty in berkeley and remained there until she was appointed by president clinton to the Federal Reserve board of governors in 1994. Three years later he named her chair. 2004, secretary yellen began her third tenure as president of the Federal Reserve bank of San Francisco and in 2010 president obama appointed her vice chair of the Federal Reserve, nominating her to be the chair of the Federal Reserve were she was the top anchor of the nation from 2014 to 2018. She has been a strong advocate of the irs in our workforce and we greatly appreciate her and all the efforts to secure funding for the Revenue Service to help us transform and modernize our tax system. Please join me in welcoming secretary janet yellen. [applause] thank you so much for the lovely introduction and its great to be here with all of you. Before i begin, i would like to speak about the recent decision to downgrade the u. S. Credit rating. Over the past few years the American Economy has seen an historic recovering from the depths of pandemic downturn. Over 13 million new jobs have been created since january of 2021. Our Unemployment Rate stands at 3. 6 percent near historic lows. Overall annual inflation has declined every month for the past year and our economy continues to grow. In the longerterm the United States remains the Worlds Largest most dynamic, most innovative economy, with the strongest Financial System in the world. This decision is puzzling in light of the economic strength that we see in the United States. I strongly disagree with the fitch decision and believe it is entirely unwarranted. The flawed assessment is based on outdated data and fails to reflect improvements across a range of indicators, including those related to governance that we have seen over the past 2. 5 years. Despite the gridlock we have seen both parties come together to pass legislation to resolve the debt limit as well as to make historic investments in our infrastructure and american competitiveness. Fiscal responsibilities, priorities for President Biden and me. Earlier this year the president signed debt limit legislation that included 1 trillion in deficit reduction. His budget would also improve the fiscal outlook by reducing the deficit by 2. 6 trillion dollars over the next 10 years. Today we are here to speak about an irs Modernization Project launched this time last year to reduce deficits by hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade by ensuring that the irs has the resources it needs to enforce wealthy taxpayers and large corporations that have not paid their taxes that they owe. At the end of the day, the fitch decision does not change what all of us already know. Treasury securities remain the worlds preeminent safe and liquid assets and that the American Economy is fundamentally strong. Let me now turn to the reason why we he can about the irs and the transformation thats taking place. Let me first thank the commissioner for his leadership of the irs. Commissioner, just five months into your current 10 year you hit the ground running and made your mark on this institution. I am grateful for your Management Experience and dedication to Good Governance that you bring to this difficult job. Its a pleasure to be back with the employees of the irs. Almost a year ago i visited the irs facility in maryland. I underscored that it is our nations Revenue Collection Agency and irs is a foundation of government society. The agency collect 96 of the revenue that it funds for federal government. By extension, playing an indispensable role in priorities from National Defense to Retirement Security and of the construction and maintenance of our infrastructure. The irs also serves as one of the few parts of government that touches nearly every american household. I stressed then as i always have that i would do everything i could to support you as you step up to serve the American People at this critical juncture. It is remarkable what the employees of the irs have been able to do. Over the three years of the covid19 emergency, our nation lived through multiple variance, closures of schools and businesses, and disruption of day to day activities. Throughout it all you worked aroundtheclock to collect our nations revenues and deliver critical relief to americans in need. Last year with the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act you were called once again to meet the moment. This time the task was to transform the irs and create a fairer and more modernized Tax Administration system that the American People expect and deserve. And i know it has not been easy but i know that this is a transformation thats many of you have advocated for so long. We have so much progress to report angst to your hard work and dedication. Last year i laid out several goals for the 2023 Filing Season. Let me speak about how we did on each of them. First, we set a bold goal to drastically transform the level of Customer Service the taxpayers can expect over the phone. During the 2022 Filing Season the irs averaged a 10 to 15 level of service. Meaning they answered less than two of every 10 calls. Our goal for this year was to achieve 85 level of service. Because of your hard work, im pleased to announce that we exceeded the goal, 87 levels of service with wide assistance this filing system season. More than a fivefold increase. The drastic improvement is thanks to over 5000 new buyers made possible by the Inflation Reduction Act. We answered 3 million more phone calls than in 2022 and we cut wait times from 28 minutes to three minutes. Thats astounding progress that we should all be proud of. Second, we advanced our commitment to expand in person assistance and meet taxpayers in the communities where they live. In total serving 130 thousand more taxpayers in person through the end of this Filing Season than last year. We have open door reopened 35 Taxpayer Assistance Centers through the assistance of the law. That includes ones in indiana and fredericksburg, just one hour south of here. And in charlottesville, two hours southwest of here. There are new or newly reopened Assistance Centers in dozens of cities and towns, from colorado to pennsylvania and mississippi. The irs has begun setting up temporary popup Assistance Centers and hard to reach areas that may be far from permanent irs centers. In june the irs hosted its first such popup event in paris, texas and there are plans to do many more across the country. Third, i announced that we would automate the scanning of millions of paper returns in 2023. Millions of taxpayers will be able to receive and respond to notices online. Because of your work, we are doing just that. We have made it easier and quicker for americans to interact with the agency. In the First Quarter of this year, the irs scanned 80 times more paper returns than in the entire year of 2022. Taxpayers were also able to respond online to 10 of the most common tax notices, including those that alert taxpayers to the fact that they may be eligible for certain tax credits they may not have claimed. By the middle of this month we plan to expand we plan to expand this functionality to an addition of 53 notices that are currently received through the mail. As the National Taxpayer advocate has said, the difference between this years Filing Season and last years has been like night and day. The accomplishments i just outlined are just a fraction of what you have done. You have undertaken heroic efforts to address the pandemic backlog of unprocessed returns. And i am extraordinarily proud that the irs has fully cleared the backlog of 2022 individual returns that have no errors. Today, i am pleased to announce another major milestone for the irs. It is one that we are calling paperless processing. And it marks a significant step in our efforts to digitalize irs operations. Today, we are announcing that by the next Filing Season, taxpayers will be able to digitally submit all correspondence, nontax forms, and notice responses to the irs. Now, of course, taxpayers will always have the choice to submit documents by paper. For those taxpayers, by Filing Season 2025, the irs is committing to digitally process 100 of tax and information returns that are submitted by paper as well as half of all paper correspondence, nontax forms, and notice responses. We will also digitalize Historical Documents that are currently in storage at the irs. In a few moments, commissioner werfel will provide more details about this announcement. But let me briefly explain why this is a massive transformation. Despite previous modernization efforts, the irs has remained in large part a paperbased agency. The agency receives about 200 million paper documents a year. Many of which still undergo manual processing. It also has decades of Historical Documents that together cost around 40 million a year to store. But thanks to the ira, we are in the process of transforming the irs into a Digital First agency. This Paperless Processing Initiative is the key that unlocks other Customer Service improvements. It will enable taxpayers to see their documents, securely access their data, and save time and money. And it will allow other parts of the irs to rely on these digital copies to provide fast relief funds can reduce errors in text processing, and deliver a more seamless and responsive Customer Service experience, and much more. I urge congress to provide stable and sufficient annual appropriations for the irs in order to sustain and build on this progress. In addition to these Customer Service improvements, we are also making progress on our effort to build a fairer tax system. Without the ira, our country faced a tax gap, the gap between the taxes owed and those paid, from an astounding 7 trillion over the next decade. With the ira but we are shrinking this tax gap to investments that will help us. This does not pay the taxes they owe. As i said, i directed that ira resources not be used to increase the audit rate for businesses and households making under 400,000 a year relative to historical levels. The focus of our Enforcement Efforts is on peeling back the structures of large corporations, complex partnerships, and other high income and high wealth taxpayers to make sure they are paying their full bill. We know that this requires investment. It takes up to 50 times as long to review the tax returns of wealthy individuals than to complete simple audits. Corporate audits are over hundreds of hours over years. That is why the irs is focused on hiring top talent as well as using data and analytics to pursue smarter enforcement and go after cases most likely to reveal significant tax evasion. I believe that these improvements are a matter of smart economics. After all, we expect our fair Enforcement Effort to more than pay for itself, reducing our deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade. But i also believe it is a matter of fundamental fairness. It is essential when regular taxpayers accurately file their taxes, they know that other americans are also doing the same. Of course, we are just as committed to helping honest taxpayers get it right in the first place. The irs is investing in resources that help taxpayers identify and avoid errors before they file their returns and claim the credit and deductions that they are eligible for. The irs has also made common sense changes like ending most unannounced visits to taxpayers, better formal enhanced safety for taxpayers and irs employees, and bolster confidence in its work. The difference in these investments will take time to see but the ira has taken aggressive action over the past few months to crackdown on tax evasion. In recent months, the agency has closed about 175 delinquent tax cases from millionaires, and that has generated about 38 million in recoveries. The irs has also continued to intensify its effort to enforce against wealthy individuals who fail to file tax returns at all. So, to conclude, in less than a year since the passage of the ira, we have seen the early results of our investment in the irs. And i believe those results speak for themselves. Todays announcement and the other milestones that we have already reached are a testament to what dedicated federal employees can do when they are provided the tools and the resources to succeed. I am grateful to everyone at the irs for their extraordinary dedication to Public Service and their hard work in building and irs that works for the American People. Thank you. [applause] thank you very much, secretary yellen. I am grateful for your leadership and consistent focus on holding the irs accountable to modernize and make it easier for americans to navigate our complex tax system. The scanning of paper 1040s the secretary yellen and i observed was history in the making for the irs. It is a critical step to help us take a giant step forward. This has been a team effort. For i get started, i want to mention team digi as we refer to it in the irs and various irs divisions that are participating in the skinning initiative that have been a longtime in the making including information technology, privacy government liaison and disclosure and procurement. There are many other parts of the irs involved in this effort, including the Taxpayer Advocate service, and a significant part will be on the new Strategy Office which is helping to put in place scanning as part of our overall strategic plan. I deeply appreciate all of their hard work to get us where we are today and to keep us moving forward in this vital area. When i became commissioner nearly five months ago, one of my top goals was to find new ways for the irs to use technology to help taxpayers. And the work underway with the Strategic Operating plan, with the funding provided by the Inflation Reduction Act, has us exploring numerous ways we could better use technology to make the entire tax process more efficient. As the secretary noted, we have seen major accompaniment and many more out in progress are in progress as we modernize to improve technology, Better Service, and fair enforcement. But the Paperless Process Initiative we are launching today stands out as a special one out of all of these projects. It is a very clear example of how with the right funding and the right priorities we can relatively quickly move the irs operations decades forward. Indeed, the amount of paper still being used inside the irs often feels more like the 1970s and the 1980s than the 21st century. During the pandemic, you all saw the photos of the irs cafeteria in our austin campus with racks and racks of paper absolutely filling the room not normally used for storage. Tens of millions of pieces of paper that require manual processing flood our campuses and offices. It is time to ensure that no cafeteria in the irs ever looks like that again. As the Taxpayer Advocate who is here today has noted, is the paper dust noted, paper is the agencies kryptonite. We are slower and more prone to errors. To counter that tonight, there are emerging technologies that will make it possible for us to convert the oceans of paper that arrive at our doors into a digital format before it ever leaves our mailroom. Specifically, it is now our goal that by the 2025 Filing Season, the irs will achieve paperless processing, which means digitizing all paper file returns as soon as they are received. Achieving this milestone will enable up to 76 million paper documents to be processed digitally every year. And more immediately, during the 2024 Filing Season, we are giving taxpayers new tools that will help them go paperless should they choose. We are launching webbased solutions for the upcoming Filing Season that will allow virtually all correspondence to be uploaded by taxpayers rather than mail them. Being able to digitally submit their correspondence and responses and other paper, that means taxpayers will have the potential to digitally submit up to 125 million paper documents each year. In addition, we will be adding more nontax form and digital family formats that will make it easier for taxpayers to complete and submit. All of this means the irs will improve service, cutting internal process times, and even speeding refund delivery for taxpayers that are still choosing to submit a paper 1040. A digital irs rather than a paper irs is exactly what was intended when congress provided new funds under the Inflation Reduction Act. And our announcement today shows that we are taking the steps to make good on the promise. Here is an example. Although the vast majority of people filing electronically, millions of households still file paper returns. And although we preferred them to file electronically, people should be reassured they can still file a paper tax return under this scanning effort. Up to now, our only option was to manually process these paper returns, which means people are key stroking numbers by hand. This is very timeconsuming and costly when compared with electronically filed returns. Scanning is a game changer for taxpayers and our Tax Administration. To the extent we can scan and electronically process paper returns, we can significantly shorten the processing time for those returns. This means refunds from tax returns filed on paper can be issued more quickly and any issues with the returns can be resolved much faster. We are also able to gather more information from those forms, allowing us to provide Better Service and better enforce the tax code. This has many implications, including having more current information in the hands of our Customer Service representatives to help taxpayers. Scanning paper forms has actually been going on at the irs for a long time. More than 35 years. But it has been piecemeal. The irs has not gotten to where it needs to be. Until recently, reductions in funding and personnel for the agency combined with the lack of certainty in our future funding made it impossible to take a more comprehensive approach to scanning and to fully tackle the enormous volume of paper that comes to the irs each and every day. Thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act funding during the past year, we are now accelerating and scaling our skinning capabilities. We started by scanning paper forms 940, the employment tax returns sent in by businesses each year. We expended this effort to include form 941, the quarterly tax returns sent by employers, and then we began scanning the 1040. One of the reasons it is so exciting to see the 1040s scanned is it was not easy to duplicate we had to build up to it, which is why we started with the two simpler forms, the 940 and the 941. With all of its attachments and schedules, the 1040 was a much bigger job so reaching the milestone was very important. Now that we are scanning individual taxpayer returns, i want to point out that the scanning process we developed is completely safe and secure. Each scanned 1040 is saved into is it file that includes a digital copy of each document submitted. We will continue monitoring and evaluating our process to make sure it remains secure and we will do everything we can to ensure taxpayerss return data will remain protected. So far this year, we have scanned more than 700,000 paper forms. These include 940, 941, and 1040s. As this project progresses, we will build on that momentum. One important thing i should reemphasize from the taxpayer standpoint, we described this as paperless irs. But that refers to what we want to have happened on the irs side of the tax equation. People can still send paper and. But once it gets to the irs, we want to be able to scan it and digitalize scan and digitalize these forms, adding efficiency. While being able to scan in textile firms is a major milestone, it is still one of a broader effort to modernize the agency as well as bring the irs fully into the digital age. Digitalization has farreaching implications for how the irs can improve service. Improving service is not just about online capabilities. Transforming the irs also means continuing to improve service on the phones and in person. And we have also been stepping up our efforts on enforcement. For example, we are expanding our work to ensure millionaires play by the same rules as everyone else. In this area, we are starting to see results. As the secretary mentioned, holding millionaire tax delinquents accountable and collecting hefty amounts of owed taxes. Tax evaders should not be driving maseratis and brantley while other people are playing by the rules. The bottom line is the irs and after the Inflation Reduction Act is very different than irs before. This is good for taxpayers and good for the nation. We have a unique opportunity, a once in a generation chance to envision and realize the future of Tax Administration. We continue to make progress on this and will continue to focus on both the shortterm and longterm wins as we move forward. We will build on the successes we have already seen this past Filing Season and continue to put in place improvements to help taxpayers ensure fairness and tax compliance, and improve technology. For these impairments to continue and accelerate, a consistent reliable funding stream remains critical for the agency both in our annual appropriations process and in maintaining Inflation Reduction Act funding. This concludes our event, and thank you for attending. [applause]