Congress Urged to Give IRS Authority on Volunteer Mileage

Congress should allow the Secretary of Treasury to adjust the tax deduction rate for volunteers who use their own vehicles for volunteer work, the national taxpayer advocate told Congress this week.

Nina E. Olson, the taxpayer advocate, said in her annual report to Congress that the Internal Revenue Service has the authority to amend the deduction rates for business-related travel to adjust for inflation.

The rate for volunteers, however, remains fixed in the tax code.

As a result, volunteers are eligible for a deduction of 14 cents per mile driven, while taxpayers can deduct 55 cents per mile for business-related travel.

Ms. Olson, who operates independently of other IRS offices and reports to Congress, also criticized the IRS’s tax-exempt division for relying too heavily on its Web site to communicate with charities and other tax-exempt organizations.

The IRS has, in the past, has relied more on speeches by its officials to tax-exempt groups in face-to-face settings.

“Electronic taxpayer service should not supplant face-to-face outreach unless EO has data that supports organizations preference for these services,” Ms. Olson wrote in her report to Congress.

The 2008 report did not mention a key recommendation from Ms. Olson’s 2007 report, which stated that the IRS needs to take more aggressive steps to help smaller charities understand the increasingly complex tax code.