Towana
Intake Advocate, Taxpayer Advocate Service

My job title is Intake Advocate with the Taxpayer Advocate

Service. On a daily basis, my job consists of talking to taxpayers on the 
phone, addressing their issues and concerns. If they have a hardship we have 
to accept the case into the Advocate Program. The case will be assigned to a 
Case Advocate. And the Case Advocate will work hand in hand with the IRS to 
resolve the taxpayer's issues. I also deal with a database, where we get our 
inventory of workload, and I have to screen each case that comes in and get 
the case assigned to a Case Advocate so they can do their research and help 
the taxpayer as much as possible. When I first came in to the IRS, I was a 
clerk/typist with Examination Division, Audit Department. And I graduated 
from that to a Branch Chief Secretary, which is a little above the Group 
Secretary status. From there, then I became the Management Assistant to 
the Local Taxpayer Advocate. That's where I'm at now.  So, from that, I 
graduated to the Intake Advocate. So that's basically in a nutshell. I 
could see my future with the IRS Taxpayer Advocate Service growing.  When 
I say that, it's in reference to becoming a Case Advocate, getting more 
familiar with the taxpayers, the issues at hand, actually, and after that, 
I would like to become an Analyst, where I can oversee the organization 
stats, the spreadsheets, the volume of cases that come into the Service, 
what systematically works for us and what doesn't. And basically, I see 
myself growing. You don't need a college degree to become a Case 
Advocate or an Intake Advocate.  But what you do need is the drive, 
the willingness to help people, to try to go beyond the call of duty 
to help  and assist the taxpayers,  because they're not knowledgeable 
of the IRS systems and procedures and policies. So you have to educate 
the taxpayer, so this way, they won't find themselves in that situation 
again, and it's just rewarding to help the taxpayers. Helping people is 
the best part of my job, yeah. I like to have that gratification of 
saying -- the customer will call me and say, "Thank you so much "for helping 
me, you know, without you guys, I don't know where we would be," you know, 
so that's like, [Sighs] makes me feel good, makes me feel good.