The Day to Day: Consistent, Yet Flexible

The agency seeks revenue agents who have sharp accounting skills and a keen interest in tax law. If that describes you, it’s also to your advantage if you’re an empathetic, analytical and collaborative professional who can help people with their taxes. This work helps our government collect the funding it needs to provide essential services to the public.

A revenue agent’s daily life is a mix of investigation, research and communication. Compared with some other accounting career paths, which can involve long, unpredictable hours, IRS revenue agents work 40-hour weeks, including during tax season, and have a great deal of control over their day.

This is no boring desk job. Each tax case is unique, and revenue agents work in the office and out in the field to resolve cases. You would constantly learn new things while also getting a change of scene as you meet with taxpayers.

Still having a tough time picturing the day of a revenue agent? Here’s the bottom line: Your job is to determine how much taxpayers owe. This involves:

  • Reviewing new cases assigned to you to understand the individual or the type of business being reviewed, including what type of work the taxpayer does.
  • Researching tax laws, regulations and rulings on similar cases to see how they apply to the cases you’re working on.
  • Requesting meetings and information from business and individuals about their income, investments and other financial activities.

This sample Outlook calendar of a revenue agent represents the many different tasks that may fill your day if you become one. It’s an example of how your work could take place from home, the office or the field, but no two days look exactly quite the same from one day to the next. Plus, you have control of your schedule. You will determine when and where meetings take place.

 

Constant Opportunities to Learn and Grow Through Stimulating Work

Revenue agents work across several teams, each of which specializes in specific types of taxes, making the IRS a great place to learn new aspects of the tax system. You can become an expert in tax returns for individuals, businesses, nonprofit organizations and even for pension plans, universities and local governments. Within each of these divisions, you can further develop specialized knowledge such as working on whistleblower complaints connected to a particular tax return. Or when a tax return claims a refund of more than $2 million, triggering a review by the congressional committee on taxation.

Special assignments, including details to other teams, temporary promotions and special project opportunities contribute to your career growth as you learn new skills such as developing and testing new systems and teaching classes.

 

Feature: Service to America Medal Honorees from the IRS

How IRS Employees Make Life Easier and Safer for the American public.

Paperless Processing Initiative Team: The team worked to transition taxpayer communications with the agency from mail to digital. Team members continue with the transition, including offering taxpayers the ability to provide requested documents through an upload tool and respond to IRS documents they receive. They delivered results three months ahead of schedule and the agency now accepts more than 3,000 types of documents. Seemingly simple, the effort included developing workflows that ensured the right employees were reviewing documents as they came in and retraining employees on how to use the digital tools to review incoming documents—as many as 125 million over the year.

Bitcoin Terror Takedown Team: An example of cross-government collaboration, this team included representatives of the IRS, FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. During COVID-19, the terrorist group ISIS created a website offering for sale much sought-after face masks. Shutting down this effort to trick the U.S. public into funding terrorism was one of several successes of this multi-agency team, which seized more than 300 cryptocurrency accounts holding $2 million. Much of the financial activity was taking place outside the U.S. and inside crypto wallets, a relatively new concept. This team’s success demonstrated the ability of federal employees to stay on top of emerging technology while handling complex international affairs.

Tax Data Import Project for Student Aid: Filling out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, used to require the manual upload of tax information. For many young college-bound students, this included tracking down unfamiliar documents from their parents, who may not have kept good records. Thanks to an effort spearheaded by a single IRS employee, the FAFSA automatically imports tax data from the IRS, making it easier for students to access the grants and loans that enable them to go to college.