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In a recommendation for customer service that could apply as well to many other agencies that deal with calls from the public, the GAO has said that the IRS should publicly disclose up front the types of questions its representatives can’t answer.
That was among the recommendations of a report on implementation of the late-2017 tax law changes, including the implications for customer service. That service degraded in the 2019 tax season, GAO, with 66.9 percent of callers getting assistance compared with 80 percent in 2018, and an average wait time of 9 minutes vs. 5.1.
The decline, which the report said was partly due to the effects of the partial government shutdown ahead of the filing season, followed four years of improvement since bottoming out in 2015 at 37.4 percent and 23.1 minutes.
“In addition, if you call with a question, it might not be one that IRS can answer. Each year, IRS makes a list of topics it considers “out of scope” and refers the taxpayer to irs.gov or a tax professional for assistance,” GAO said. Instead, it said, the IRS should post a list of those topics online “for taxpayers to know before they call whether or not IRS can answer their question.”
GAO added that in deciding which services to move online—as many other agencies also are doing—the IRS “prioritizes services primarily based on their potential to benefit the agency’s operations or because they can be developed quickly. And although IRS recognizes that taxpayers want more online options, it doesn’t consider taxpayer input in its prioritization process.”
It further recommended that the agency “collect and use employee input on the strengths and weaknesses of its customer service training, including on whether training is effective in improving CSRs’ performance, to inform changes to its training program and strategy under the Taxpayer First Act.”