House Republicans Go After IRS Agent Funding But Leave Technology Funds Alone Because Even the GOP Agrees IRS Call Wait Times Suck
This lady is going to be on hold for a long time, her phone isn’t even plugged in to the wall. The GOP-led House voted 221-210 on Monday to eliminate almost 90 percent of $80 billion in new IRS funding under the Inflation Reduction Act, much of which is supposed to be used to fund […]
Audit Finds That IRS Small Business Division Not So Different From That Attractive Person at the Bar Who Seemed Really Interested in You
They say they'll call and meanwhile you sit by the phone like an IDIOT. TIGTA […] found that examiners are trained and monitored to ensure they provide accurate information to taxpayers, but they do not consistently return calls when requested by or promised to taxpayers. TIGTA identified 20 calls during which the taxpayer either requested […]
TIGTA Concerned That IRS Is Blowing Off Deaf, Mutes (and Presumably Deaf-Mutes)
The IRS sucks at a lot of things. Given.
Thankfully we have Treasury Inspector General of Tax Administration to inform us about said failures opportunities for improvement.
But today’s news that the IRS isn’t doing enough to help our hearing and speech-impaired friends is especially disheartening to the TIGTA overlords. They can (somewhat) understand providing crappy service to regular Americans (try reading the instructions people) but if you’re unfortunate enough to be without speech or hearing, the IG felt obligated to point out the IRS’s shortcomings:
TIGTA performed an audit to evaluate both the IRS’s customer service toll-free telephone access during the 2010 Filing Season and the access and service it provided to hearing and speech-impaired taxpayers. TIGTA found that the IRS exceeded its overall performance measurement goals by 2.3 percent. However, the Level of Service for the TTY/TDD toll-free telephone line for the 2010 Filing Season was just 8.8 percent, meaning that only 8.8 percent of calls placed using the TTY/TTD successfully reached an IRS assistor. The total dialed attempts for the TTY/TDD product line during the 2010 Filing Season were more than 350,000; however, IRS assistors answered only 339 of those calls.
“Our report found that far too few hearing and speech-impaired taxpayers successfully reached an IRS assistor,” said J. Russell George, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. “The IRS must do a better job of ensuring that all Americans have equal access to its services,” he said.
Actually, that is pretty shitty service. Even by IRS standards.
The IRS Could Improve Toll-Free Telephone Assistance For Hearing and Speech-Impaired Taxpayers [TIGTA]