At the IRS Nationwide Tax Forum in San Diego in September 2026, the IRS opened with a clear message about where it is heading. Technology and AI are at the forefront of how it plans to work, and the stated goal is to make dealing with the IRS easier.
For individuals, that mostly means convenience. For companies, it means something more. Every new digital channel is also a new access point into the company’s tax affairs, and a new set of decisions about who holds that access. The tools are moving quickly. The question for finance leaders is whether the controls around them are keeping up.
The IRS Business Tax Account is now available to partnerships, tax-exempt organizations, and federal, state, local and Tribal government entities, as well as the businesses that could already use it. Through it, designated officials and authorized users can:
Designated officials can now also download an EIN verification letter directly, in place of a Letter 147C. Banks and financial institutions accept it for verification, so there is no phone call to the IRS and no wait for the mail.
The IRS is actively encouraging electronic payment as part of a broader federal effort to modernize payments to and from the government. Direct Pay allows businesses to make balance due payments and federal tax deposits straight from a bank account, with no registration, for payments under $10 million. Larger payments go through EFTPS or a same-day wire.
Notices, transcripts and account information that once arrived by mail, or took a phone call to obtain, are increasingly available on demand to whoever holds the login.
Each of these changes is an improvement. Each also shifts work, and risk, to places most tax functions have not yet designed controls for.
Digital notices need a defined route: When notices arrived by mail, there was at least a physical trail. When they sit in an online account, they reach only the people who log in. Every entity needs a named recipient for IRS notices, a defined escalation path, and a deadline for review. Otherwise a notice can sit unread until the response window has closed.
Online payment access needs segregation of duties: The ability to make a federal tax payment from a company bank account in a few clicks is efficient. It also needs the same discipline as any other outgoing payment: one person to prepare, another to approve, and a reconciliation that ties payments made to liabilities recorded.
Designated officials should be chosen, not inherited: In the Business Tax Account, access goes to named individuals rather than to the organization. Those individuals can see balances, notices and transcripts. Who holds that role, for which entities, and when it was last reviewed should be a deliberate decision, recorded alongside the company’s other IRS authorizations. We covered how to build that register in Do You Know Who in Your Company Works With the IRS? earlier this month.
Faster transcripts mean fewer excuses: When payroll and income transcripts are available on demand, there is less reason for differences between IRS records and the company’s books to go unnoticed. A quarterly comparison of transcripts to the general ledger catches mismatched payments, misapplied deposits and missing filings while they are still easy to fix.
Documentation still matters most: Digital access makes it easier to see what the IRS has. It does not explain why the company took the positions it did. That still depends on contemporaneous records, as covered in Tax Documentation: Why It’s Your Best Audit Defense. If anything, faster IRS access to information raises the bar for how quickly a company can produce its own.
The upside of all this is real. A tax function that uses these tools well can see its federal position more clearly, more often, and with less effort than before.
That visibility is most valuable when it reaches leadership. Balances, open notices and the status of IRS correspondence by entity can become a standing part of how tax is reported to the CFO and board. The structure for that kind of reporting is set out in Board-Ready Tax Reporting, and digital access makes it far easier to keep current.
It also supports a broader shift, from reacting to whatever arrives in the mail to working from a clear, current view of the company’s position. That is the change described in From Reactive to Proactive: Building a Tax Planning Culture in Your Organization, and the IRS’s direction makes it easier to achieve than ever.
Before year-end, it is worth confirming that:
The IRS is building the tools. Someone inside the company still needs to own how they are used, who has access, and how the information they provide reaches the people making decisions. For many growing companies, that ownership is the missing piece.
That is the role an embedded tax leader plays: making sure the company’s controls keep pace with the IRS, so that going digital delivers the efficiency and visibility it promises, without opening new gaps along the way.
Koru Accountancy Corp provides fractional VP/Director of Tax leadership to growing and complex organizations. We specialize in embedding executive-level tax expertise directly into finance teams, supporting companies through growth, transition, and complexity. To learn more, visit koruaccountancy.com.
