Getting Started: SAMS does not require additional software to be installed on your computer.  The issue submission process does require you to give us a few details about yourself, such as your name and location.  However, this is for tracking purposes only.  The TAS Office of Systemic Advocacy will not use the information for any other purpose or share it with other IRS functions.

We ask for your e-mail address in order to be able to reply to your question.  We use it only for this purpose and will keep it only long enough to provide you with a response.  Once this service is completed, your e-mail address is deleted and will not be stored, sold, shared, or used for any other purpose except as may be required by law.  For more information about how IRS handles information from our web site visitors, you may link to the IRS Privacy Statement available at the bottom of each IRS.gov webpage.

Submitting An Issue: Before submitting an issue, you must fill out the Issue Qualification Form to determine whether you have a systemic advocacy issue.  If it does qualify, you'll be directed to the Issue Submission Form, which will display five fields to fill in:

• Submission From:  Use the drop-down menu to identify yourself as a taxpayer, a practitioner, a member of a trade or professional group or part of an academic/research institution, etc. 
• Location: Use the drop-down menu to tell us what state or territory you're from. 
• Email address: Enter your email address.  Please be sure it's correct, because this will be our only means of communication with you once you submit the issue.
• Issue Summary: Enter a short sentence that summarizes the issue and your concerns.  Example: "The IRS Campus at ___ (name of city) is incorrectly assessing failure to deposit (FTD) penalties."  Try to include key words that others might search for later: the key words in the example above would be campus, FTD and penalties.
• Issue Description: Enter the details of the issue or problem: does the problem follow a pattern?  Who or what is affected?  Do not use personal names, addresses, or any other identifying information.  Do you know if this or a similar issue has surfaced in the past?  If you know it, enter the IRS Functional Business Unit involved (such as Wage and Investment or Large and Mid-Sized Businesses).  Again, try to use key words that others might search for later.  Please input a separate submission for each unrelated issue or problem (limited to 2000 characters).

Do not submit any taxpayer or personal information, such as a Social Security number.  Also, please don't paste in text from Microsoft Word, which contains hidden characters.  If you feel that you need to paste something into a field, prepare the document in Notepad (found under Accessories on the Windows Start menu), which is plain text.  You can also convert Word files to text and paste from those.

After you've completed all fields: Please look over your issue before clicking the "Submit" button.  Make sure you've described the problem in as much detail as you can, and have entered key words that will help us analyze the issue and identify trends in data.  The more information we have, the easier it will be to determine how to resolve the issue.

If you are satisfied with your entries: click the "Submit" issue button (at the bottom of the Submit Issue screen) to send the form to Systemic Advocacy for processing.  You'll see a brief confirmation screen indicating that your issue was received, describing the next step in the process, and allowing you to print your submission if you like.

A separate confirmation notice will be sent to the email address you entered in the submitter information section.  You'll get other notices as we review your issue and its status changes: for example, you'll be notified if your issue becomes an Advocacy Project, or if it will not be worked as a Project at the present time.  Most advocacy projects require significant coordination with stakeholder groups and IRS counterparts, so the timeframes for completing projects vary depending on the complexity of the issues.  The Taxpayer Advocate Service works with the responsible IRS office to effect the appropriate changes.