Taxable Talk

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) released this morning an analysis of the 2015 filing season. There is both good news and bad news in the report.

First, some good news. The IRS has improved the detection of fraudulent tax returns and identity theft returns. In 2012, the IRS processed 9.11% of fraudulent returns (311,717 of 3,422,505); in 2014, it only processed 5.24% (114,219 of 2,180,613). (Note that this is based on the processing year, so this statistic relates to 2011 returns processed in 2012 and 2013 returns processed in 2014.) The IRS has also made strides in detecting identity theft returns. There were 382,398 such returns processed in 2013, but that number decreased to 236,313 in 2014 and 141,214 in 2015. That’s still too many, but stopping two-thirds of such returns is a significant step forward.

Of course, for every step forward there’s usually a step backwards. And for the IRS that’s been in customer service on the phone. In the 2013 fiscal year, the IRS answered 15,609,615 calls with a 69.8% “Level of Service” and an average speed of answer of 14.1 minutes. In the 2015 fiscal year, the IRS answered 8,277,064 calls with a 37.6% “Level of Service” and an average speed of answers of 23.5 minutes. (“Level of Service” is defined as, “The primary measure of service to taxpayers. It is the relative success rate of taxpayers who call for live assistance on the IRS toll‑free telephone lines.”)

So let’s translate this into reality. In the 2013 fiscal year, 22,363,345 phone calls were attempted to various IRS toll-free lines; 15,609,615 were answered (69.8%). In the 2015 fiscal year, 22,013,468 phone calls were attempted to various IRS toll-free lines; 8,277,064 were answered (37.6%). As for the time on hold allegedly decreasing to 23.5 minutes, perhaps that’s after excluding all the time some of the 7 million people who called but whose calls were dropped or who hung up spent on the phone. I’d love to see an average time of 23.5 minutes when I call the IRS Practitioner Priority Service.

Unfortunately, the volume of IRS notices hasn’t changed from year-to-year, but the “Service” part of the name Internal Revenue Service is falling away. This has negative consequences; it is likely that Americans’ compliance with tax laws will decrease because they’re guessing on what to do rather than being able to talk to the IRS.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 21st, 2015 at 10:38 am and is filed under IRS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.