Service levels could leave taxpayers frustrated and confused, and jeopardize tax compliance. Image: Brian A Jackson/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffThe IRS has taken several steps to improve customer service in recent years including hiring of more phone representatives but still has a long way to go to return to prior levels of service, the Congressional Research Service has said.
Customer service representatives answered 18 percent of calls routed to them during this year’s filing season, which is “effectively unchanged” from the 19 percent of 2021 but “both are significantly below the 59 percent answered in 2019. Additionally, this season (2022), the average caller who did get through to an IRS agent waited 29 minutes, an increase of 9 minutes from last year and 19 minutes from 2019.”
Those figures further don’t account for calls that encounter busy signals, disconnect before entering the queue for an agent, or receive an automated response.
That level of service “could leave taxpayers frustrated and confused, and in turn jeopardize tax compliance. If taxpayer who was unable to get their question answered makes an error, the IRS could theoretically remedy it by requesting correspondence or requiring the taxpayer to amend their return. However, many such amended returns must be submitted on paper and processed manually, which takes significantly longer than processing electronic returns,” it said.
One contributing factor, it said, was the surge of calls regarding several special tax provisions enacted in response to the pandemic.
Steps already taken, it said, include expanding automated phone services; providing for call-backs rather than having callers wait on hold; and adding some 4,000 reps, bringing the total to 13,000. More hiring is planned under this year’s wrap up budget bill, which provided funding and direct hire authority for some 10,000 employees agency-wide, including another 4,000 reps.
It added that the recently enacted Inflation Reduction Act boosted agency funding by 9 percent above what otherwise was projected for the next 10 years but “It is not yet clear how much of this additional spending the IRS will dedicate to expanding phone service.” The IRS is to report by February on how it intends to use the additional funding under that law.
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