Donna
Employment Tax Specialist, LMSB Revenue Agent

I work on large case taxpayers, which are the ones you read about in the newspaper; and employment tax -- basically audits -- executive compensation and employee fringes; and that sort
of compliance.

A lot of it is compliance, and you look for -- you look for compliance in what is compensation in wages for the small guy up to the CEO of the company. And typically, we start with executives and work our way down, if you will.

Because there are certain things that come to our attention, and they affect every employee. Other things will affect just the senior executives. But you do make a difference in that their wages are reported accurately, and reported accurately to Social Security, so that when they retire years from now, their wages will be correctly stated.

The laws are complex, and employers, for the most part, in good faith, are trying to implement them correctly. It's just that there's so much to do correctly that they don't always do the correct thing.

And that's why we're here. We're here to help bring them into the compliance that they need to have to do it right going forward. 

My background prior to coming to the Service was approximately 20 years of experience in the private sector. Some of it in public accounting, some of it in internal audit, most of it in corporate tax accounting.

The first thing you should do if you're interested in coming to the IRS is finish your accounting degree. Most states require the extra 30 hours now to get you to the 150 hours. Get your master's in tax, preferably, or accounting.

There's a lot of specialties that you can hire into at the Service that, you know, you need a solid, fundamental background in accounting and somewhat in tax.

But -- so you start with that. The Internal Revenue Service very much wants employees to have a work-life balance. They very much want volunteerism and activism in the community. They want us to be good citizens, and that's important.

The work variety is very similar to public when you're a specialist, because you're juggling so many different cases, so many different taxpayers, so many different teams and groups of people that you're working with, both on our side of the table and on the taxpayer's side of the table.

It's not that different. But what is different is the ability to leave it at the end of the day, go home, do something else, enjoy your family, take care of a personal commitment, and not have that questioned.