New Look for IRS Web Site
Garners Award for Innovation

WASHINGTON - The Internal Revenue Service´s redesigned Web site continues to be a top attraction for both taxpayers and awards, logging more than 2 billion hits this fiscal year and gaining recognition for its improvements.

In June, e-Gov will recognize the IRS with its Pioneer Award for innovative approaches to improving products and services. IRS.gov will be one of 20 government sites being awarded for improvements. On June 26-27, IRS.gov officials will give a best-practice briefing and staff an information kiosk during the e-Gov Exposition to share experiences with other government officials.

“Although we are glad IRS.gov is receiving this recognition, we will continue working to make the site easier to use. The redesign of IRS.gov was the first step toward making it better for both taxpayers and tax preparers. IRS.gov will continue to evolve and new features will be added,” said Charles O. Rossotti, IRS commissioner.

The updated IRS.gov recently ranked number one as the Web´s top searched-for site in the “Lycos 50.”

Launched Jan. 28, the new IRS.gov was intended to make the Web site more user friendly. The design is intended to allow visitors to find their information within a few clicks, to quickly locate tax forms and publications for download and to get fast responses to frequently asked questions (FAQs).

The new site is organized by the following categories:

• Individuals
• Businesses
• Charities and Non-Profits
• Government Entities
• Tax Professionals
• Retirement Plans

Gregory Carson, director, Modernization Program Office, Electronic Tax Administration, said, “Our approach was to take an immensely popular site and make it much better by applying a simpler design based on user roles and allowing visitors to move through the site more quickly. The idea was to make it easier for customers to find the information and documents they need with fewer clicks."

IRS.gov contains a huge volume of public documents, some 90,000 pages of content. To help visitors reach their destination, the new IRS.gov offers an enhanced search capability and easier navigation tools. The cleaner design also means faster downloads.

IRS.gov is one of the most visited sites on the World Wide Web. Since the 2002 fiscal year began last October, IRS.gov has had more than 2 billion hits. On April 15, the site´s pages logged 78 million hits during a 24-hour period. Visitors also downloaded more than 200 million files.

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