The IRS has found ways to cope with reduced budges of recent years, although the agency is relying on increasingly outmoded systems, a House hearing was told.
An IRS official said that while the current tax-filing season is going well so far, about 60 percent of the agency’s hardware and 28 percent of its software “are out of date and in need of an upgrade. Continuing to rely on such outdated systems is costly and poses a risk of outages or failures.”
He also said that the agency has been making steady progress in combatting tax fraud, “even within our reduced resources” and that online customer service has been expanded.
Funding shortfalls also have been cited for lower customer service over the phone. Congress allotted an extra $290 million for fiscal 2016, money that the IRS used to add about 1,000 extra temporary employees to handle phone calls, among other steps. The result was an improvement in a measure of the service level from 37 to 70 percent. That level could be exceeded this year, he added, in part because no major tax law changes, commonly the subject of questions, were enacted last year.
Similarly, shortages of personnel caused long wait lines for in-person service at taxpayer assistance centers, but a program started in 2015 of scheduling appointments—while still allowing walk-ins—has cut wait times substantially, he said. In many cases the problem is resolved during the phone call to set up the appointment and thus it isn’t necessary to have a personal meeting at all, he added.
