The Internal Revenue Service is already making headway on its initiative to hire add an additional 10,000 employees. So far, the IRS has hired 4,000 new workers that will serve as customer service representatives, this is part of the IRS’s increasing efforts to provide aid to its overwhelmed agency before next season rolls around.
Customer Service Reps
The hiring progress of the IRS was revealed last week in a statement from the agency, saying that these newly hired customer service representatives will assist in addressing the everlasting backlog of returns and also clear up some phone traffic by answering taxpayer phone calls.
IRS Direct Hire Authority
With many goals and initiatives on the horizon for the IRS, they have recently been granted direct hire authority. Direct hire authority ultimately allows the agency to hire new workers on the spot. Along with the taxing agency’s wish for more support being granted, they also received $80 billion over the next 10 years all thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act that was passed in August.
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Job Fairs and More
As part of the effort to increase employment at the IRS, the agency has been holding several job fairs and recruitment events, trying to get the best and the brightest to join their side of the fight. As a result of these fairs and events, the IRS has been able to hire 4,000 employees over the last several months who are currently being trained to assist taxpayers. This assistance includes answering tax questions over the phone, and more.
IRS Commissioner Statement
IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig stated, “The IRS is fully committed to providing the best service possible, and we are moving quickly to use new funding to help taxpayers during the busy tax season. Our phone lines have been simply overwhelmed during the pandemic, and we have been unable to provide the help that IRS employees want to give and that the nation’s taxpayers deserve. But help is on the way for taxpayers. As the newly hired employees are trained and move online in 2023, we will have more assistors on the phone than any time in recent history.”
The Process
According to the IRS, the newly hired customer service reps are all in various onboarding stages. Once these employees officially join the agency, they will receive several weeks of training in the assistance of taxpayers to improve the taxpayer experience. Segments of this training include technical assistance and a briefing on taxpayers’ rights. Almost all of these 4,000 employees are expected to be fully onboarded for the beginning of the 2023 tax season.
Wrap Up
The onslaught of relentless hiring by the IRS continues, but hopefully, the most recent batch of new hires can help a taxpayer, as opposed to all 87,000 new agents being focused on auditing. We can only hope that these new IRS employees will be a good step in the right direction for addressing the customer service and backlog problems that continue to plague the agency.