Millions of Taxpayers Call the IRS for Help. Two-Thirds Don’t Reach Anyone.

The agency hired nearly 7,000 new customer-service representatives, but its internal watchdog group says it still falls short

By Ashlea Ebeling of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"Taxpayers successfully reached a human about 31% of the time this tax season"

"Despite this, the IRS rated its service a score of 88%"

"The IRS rating covers just 35 of its 102 customer-service numbers and doesn’t count the many callers who hang up in frustration or get sent to recorded messages, said" [Erin Collins, head of the IRS’s Taxpayer Advocate Service]

"For the 2.1 million people who called the agency’s collections phone line, for instance, less than one-fifth reached a representative"

"As of April, the IRS was taking more than 22 months to resolve certain identity-theft cases, and it had approximately 500,000 unresolved cases in its inventory."

"The customer-service system is inefficient in its use of existing staff, Collins said. While some lines have long wait times, representatives on others lines often “are sitting around waiting for the phone to ring,” the report said. Representatives were waiting for calls about 25% of the time they were assigned to answer the phones, the report said."