Watchdog: Just One-Third of Calls to IRS Reach a Human

If you are calling the IRS with tax questions, good luck talking to someone, according to the agency’s taxpayer advocate watchdog service.

This tax season, only about one third of the millions of taxpayers calling the IRS talked with a human, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday, citing Erin Collins, who heads the IRS Taxpayer Advocate Service.

Congress raised funding for the IRS in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act in response to the backlogged returns and customer service lines, and as of April had hired almost 7,000 more representatives, reaching an 85% level of service.

Even with the issues, the IRS rated its customer service with a score of 88%, making leaps from the 4% it gave its service during the pandemic.

Considering how few taxpayers are getting their questions answered, Collins said the high rating is not noteworthy.

The rating covers 35 of the IRS’ 102 customer service numbers, and further, it doesn’t consider the millions of people who call and hang up or get sent to a recorded message, Collins said in her midyear report.

She also noted that out of the 2.1 million people calling the agency’s collections line, less than 20% reached a human voice, and that was after staying on hold for an average of 10 minutes.

Further, there are no answers about whether the taxpayers’ issues have been resolved even if they do reach a representative.

“One would expect a caller facing eviction because an IRS levy is leaving her unable to pay her rent would receive priority over a caller requesting an account transcript,” Collins said in her report.

Meanwhile, taxpayers usually have two options when trying to reach the IRS: They can call or send a letter. But the agency now has introduced some online chatbots. In addition, taxpayers can scan and upload certain documents while responding to IRS notices.

The agency also has a callback option on its main phone lines, according to Collins.

The IRS, responding to the report in a statement, said it does not agree with the methods used to reach the conclusion but insisted that its phone service has improved.

“The IRS recognizes it needs to make further improvements, and the agency will continue working on this as part of the larger transformation efforts underway,” the statement said.

Still, also as of April, the agency was taking almost two years to resolve some cases of identity theft and still has a half-million unresolved cases in its inventory.

Collins, though, said hiring more customer service representatives is not enough to solve the IRS’s issues. She also suggested that some employees be shifted between answering phones and processing cases, saying that the system is not efficient in how it uses its existing staff.

Some of the phone lines have wait times, while other representatives find themselves “sitting around waiting for the phone to ring,” Collins said in the report, adding that some were waiting for calls about 25% of the time when they were supposed to be answering phones.