Document Upload Tool reaches key milestone; 1 million submissions received
The Internal Revenue Service announced today reaching another key milestone in the agency’s transformation work with the Document Upload Tool accepting its one millionth taxpayer submission.
Use of the Document Upload Tool, sometimes referred to as DUT, continues to grow. During the first six months of this fiscal year, more than 265,000 taxpayers used the tool, and the number continues to grow each month.
Initially launched in 2021 in a limited format and greatly expanded in 2023 with funding from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the tool offers taxpayers and tax professionals the option to respond digitally to eligible IRS notices by securely uploading required documents online through IRS.gov. For anyone with a smart phone or computer, this means that replying to IRS notices is now often as easy as scanning required documents and uploading them to the tax agency.
“The Document Upload Tool is a key part of our ambitious initiative to transform the IRS into a virtually paperless agency, and we continue to see increased use of this by taxpayers,” said IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel. “This tool saves time for taxpayers and helps IRS employees process responses faster and more efficiently. A growing number of taxpayers are using their smart phones or computers to scan and upload their responses to IRS correspondence, rather than the more time-consuming option of writing a letter or mailing in documents.”
The Document Upload Tool has shown steady growth over time as well. Since 2022, average monthly use of the DUT has more than doubled every year, from around 16,000 in 2022, to around 37,000 in 2023 and finally almost 84,000 so far in 2024. The document submissions cover a wide range of tax issues, including responding to IRS Notice CP2000, where the agency notifies taxpayers of potentially underreported income.
The IRS receives about 76 million paper tax returns and forms, as well as 125 million pieces of correspondence, notice responses and non-tax forms each year. In the past, the agency’s limited capability to accept these forms digitally or to digitize paper has added time-consuming steps that has created challenges for taxpayers, tax professionals and IRS employees. For decades, the only option available was to have taxpayers or their representatives mail or fax these documents to the tax agency.
The IRS estimates that more than 94% of individual taxpayers will have the option of no longer having to send mail to the IRS, potentially replacing up to 125 million paper documents per year, easing the paperwork burden for both them and the IRS.
The IRS team of leaders that oversaw last year’s sweeping DUT expansion is now a finalist for the 2024 Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medals. Known as the Sammies, the Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medals are considered to be the “Oscars” of public service.
To learn more about the Document Upload Tool, visit IRS.gov/dut.
Source: IRS-2024-155, June 5, 2024
