IRS service for taxpayers this past tax-filing season wasn't just as bad as predicted — it was even worse.
Phone calls dropped by the IRS switchboard skyrocketed past 8 million, rates of calls answered fell sharply and the length of time callers spent on hold grew in 2015, posing new challenges for taxpayers with questions about their returns, according to the annual objectives report to Congress by the National Taxpayer Advocate.
Nina Olson, head of the office created to help taxpayers who face IRS problems, likened the findings to Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, which opens with the famous line, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..."
"For the majority of taxpayers who filed their returns and did not require IRS assistance, the filing season was generally successful," said Olson. "For the segment of taxpayers who required help from the IRS , the filing season was by far the worst in memory."
According to the report:
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- So-called courtesy disconnects — phone calls for which the IRS switchboard essentially hangs up because it's overloaded — soared to approximately 8.8 million during the 2015 tax filing season from roughly 544,000 in 2014.
- The IRS answered 37% of taxpayer calls routed to customer service representatives between Jan. 1 and April 18, and the hold time for those who got through averaged 23 minutes. That marked a steep drop from 2014, when the IRS answered 71% of its calls and hold times averaged roughly 14 minutes.
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