Congress more than two decades ago passed an act that required certain federal agencies, including the IRS, to charge fees those using optional services the agency provides to them to in order reduce the burden on the general public in paying for this stuff. Installment agreements and the OIC program are not mandatory programs; the law does not require the IRS to offer them. As the taxpayer is supposed to pay the full tax by the return filing deadline, no taxpayer who complies with that requirement would ever need to use them. So these services are optional and the IRS must charge a fee that is supposed to reasonably cover the cost of processing those requests, whether the request is ultimately granted by the IRS or not. Put simply, this fee is there because Congress mandated it, not because of some choice by the IRS.

