If you ever have had to call the IRS for any reason, you know that getting in touch with an employee is next to impossible. Earlier this month President Biden announced the Inflation Reduction Act, which included a plethora of different things. One of them was a massive funding boost for the IRS to improve a variety of things like staff hiring, and the modernization of technology.
Trying to Reach an Employee? Good Luck
As you could have guessed, the IRS’ track record of answering the phone is not good. During the most recent filing season, the IRS received almost 73 million calls from taxpayers across the country seeking guidance or assistance with their filings. According to Erin Collins, the National Taxpayer Advocate, only 10 percent of those calls reached an agency employee.
The phone line that typically performs the worst is the Taxpayer Protection Program line for identity theft victims. Taxpayers whose returns were flagged as potential identity theft were told by the agency to call that line so they could verify their identity. Around 4.5 million calls were made last tax season to the TPP line and only 3.5 percent of them reached an employee. However, it isn’t the employees themselves to be fully blamed for this poor conversion rate; rather the faulty and outdated equipment they continue to use hinders their ability to answer phones efficiently. The IRS is currently still operating on technology that dates back to the 1960s.
IRS Needs To Modernize To Be Effective
The IRS should use part of this $80 billion in funding and give their phone answering and computer systems a complete overhaul if they hope to have a smoother 2023 tax season. The IRS did announce they expect a significant improvement to the system, and employees should be able to answer the phones more efficiently to minimize long customer wait times. “The reality is what these resources are going to mean for the American taxpayer is an IRS that finally has the tools that it needs to serve them the way they deserve,” Natasha Sarin, Treasury Counselor for tax policy and implementation said in an interview. “Tangibly, most immediately is you’re going to see an IRS that can answer the phones.”
Wrap Up
This new funding for the IRS should enable the agency to drastically improve its systems. Hopefully, the experience of dealing with the agency will be much better than in comparison to the past few years for taxpayers across the country. It will be interesting to see if the IRS keeps good on its word and uses this massive influx of cash to do so.