IRS Won’t Stop Using FAQs, Agency’s Top Lawyer Says

FAQs aren’t always the perfect form of guidance but they can be a good way to answer very general questions quickly, the IRS’s top lawyer said.

“I don’t think I see them as the ideal way to deliver guidance, but they do serve a very important function for a number of taxpayers,” IRS Chief Counsel Michael Desmond said Friday at a tax conference in Washington. “So I think it’s something we will continue to utilize when appropriate.”

• IRS has recently used FAQs to address hot-button tax issues, including in the cryptocurrency and foreign account reporting spaces. But taxpayers can’t ...