Taxpayer Advocate Again Pleads for Bigger IRS Budget to Boost Customer Service

Despite a recent budget hike to implement the new tax law, the Internal Revenue Service “doesn’t have enough employees to answer the phones, to conduct outreach and education, or to provide basic taxpayer service,” the National Taxpayer Advocate said in her latest report. The 2018 filing season in which the tax agency processed 130.5 million returns, up 1.3 percent from the previous year did bring a small decline in hold times for taxpayer calls, from 6.5 minutes in 2017 to 5.1 minutes in 2018, Nina Olson wrote in her summary. Agency staff answered 80 percent of the 42.5 million calls overall, a tad more than the 79 percent level last year. But on the special lines for strapped taxpayers calling to negotiate a special payment plan, the staff answered only 49 percent of calls, and taxpayers who got through waited for an average of 28.7 minutes on hold.