Demystifying The IRS Guidance Process

For more than 15 years, the Treasury Department and the IRS have released an annual "business plan" through which they indicate their priorities for guidance. Divided by subject area, the Guidance Priority Plan, as it is now known, lists projects that the IRS plans to work on in the coming year. The guidance year runs from July 1 to June 30. The plan is released, in recent years, in the fall (approximately three months into the year), jointly by the Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy at the Treasury Department, the Commissioner of the IRS, and the IRS Chief Counsel. As stated in their cover memo, "The plan represents projects we intend to work on actively during the plan year and does not place any deadline on completion of projects." ¹