These numbers seem to indicate that the agency is doing a good job communicating with taxpayers over the phone. In Filing Season 2018, the IRS reported an LOS of about 80 percent for the first time in over ten years, and reports a fiscal year-to-date LOS of about 76 percent.
(For a discussion of TAS’s early testing of IRS responses to taxpayers’ questions about tax reform, see Taxpayers Need More Guidance and Service to Understand and Comply With the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.) The IRS evaluates its success in answering these calls using the LOS, a measure of taxpayer access to telephone assistors.
The IRS has gotten about 2.5 million more calls in FY 2018 than during FY 2017, an increase possibly attributable totaxpayers’ questions about changes to their tax obligations after the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. In this blog, I will further detail my concerns about the IRS’s reliance on the Accounts Management (AM) Customer Service Representative (CSR) Level of Service (LOS) as the benchmark measure to evaluate its phone service, as it can mask the struggles faced by taxpayers seeking assistance.Īs of September 15, 2018, just over two weeks before the end of Fiscal Year (FY) 2018, the IRS has received nearly 96 million calls on its toll-free lines. In my 2017 Annual Report to Congress, I identified the limitations of the IRS’s telephone service as one of the Most Serious Problems encountered by taxpayers, and highlighted my concern that the IRS’s operational measures are overly focused on efficiency rather than the taxpayer experience. In these blogs, I discussed how the IRS is failing to develop its telephone service as a vital part of an omnichannel communication environment, and thus failing to recognize the needs and preferences of taxpayers.
IRSS TAXES PHONE SERIES
In a series of blogs I published earlier this year, Telephone Service in an Omnichannel Environment – The IRS Must Make Communicating with the IRS Over the Phone Easier for Taxpayers and Telephone Service in an Omnichannel Environment – The IRS Must Ensure Taxpayers Are Getting the Assistance They Need Over the Telephone, I explained why telephone communication is still an important way for taxpayers to get assistance from the IRS, even as the IRS expands its online self-help service options.
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