Phone Service at the Internal Revenue Service During the 2022 Filing Season

Phone Service at the Internal Revenue Service During the 2022 Filing Season

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INSIGHTi

Phone Service at the Internal Revenue Service
During the 2022 Filing Season
Updated September 16, 2022
Some policymakers have grown frustrated with shortcomings in the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS)
customer service during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the independent National Taxpayer
Advocate, IRS Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) answered 18% of taxpayers’ calls routed to
them during the 2022 filing season. This level of service (LOS) is effectively unchanged from the 19% of
calls the IRS answered during the 2021 season. Both are significantly below the 59% answered in 2019.
Additionally, this season (2022), the average caller who did get through to an IRS agent waited 29
minutes, a rise of 9 minutes from last year and 19 minutes from 2019.
The Taxpayer Advocate has suggested the IRS should aim to achieve an 85% LOS, while the IRS itself
aimed to achieve a 32% LOS in 2021 and a 30% LOS in 2020. These lower figures were meant to
accommodate the agency’s competing needs during the pandemic. LOS figures do not account for calls
that encounter busy signals, disconnect before entering the queue for an agent, or are routed to automated
responses.
Impact on Taxpayers
Waiting on hold costs taxpayers time. Failing to get their questions answered could leave taxpayers
frustrated and confused, and in turn jeopardize tax compliance. If a taxpayer who was unable to get their
question answered makes an error, the IRS could theoretically remedy it by requesting correspondence or
requiring the taxpayer to amend their return. However, many such amended returns must be submitted on
paper and processed manually, which takes significantly longer than processing electronic returns. As a
result, the IRS had a backlog of 5.3 million pieces of correspondence and amended returns at the end of
May 2022. It took the agency an average of over eight months to process taxpayer responses to proposed
adjustments in FY2022 through May 21, 2022, more than 3 times as long as in FY2019.
Calls Surged Amid the Pandemic
During 2021, the IRS answered 16 million calls—a 56% increase from 2019 (about 10 million), as
illustrated in Figure 1. These 16 million calls represented less than 10% of all calls received in 2021,
because call volumes soared by over 300% between 2019 and 2021. This season (2022), the IRS received
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73 million calls and answered about the same share as in 2021. The number of calls may have spiked
because taxpayers had questions about the numerous temporary provisions enacted in response to the
COVID-19 pandemic.
Figure 1. Millions of Calls to the IRS by Filing Season: Received vs. Answered

Source: Taxpayer Advocate Service, Objectives Report to Congress: Fiscal Year 2023, Figure 4. Designed by Margot L.
Crandall-Hol ick.
Notes: “Received” includes some calls not included in level-of-service (LOS) calculations, including calls that receive a
busy signal, end before the taxpayer is routed to the queue for a customer service representative, or are routed to
automated responses.
What the IRS Is Doing
The IRS has taken several steps meant to improve its phone service. The agency expanded automated
phone responses to reduce demand for calls that require a customer service representative. Additionally, to
minimize taxpayer confusion and thus reduce the number of taxpayers calling with questions, the IRS
paused sending certain notices related to unprocessed returns. The IRS also tried prioritizing phone
service over processing amended returns for the 2021 filing season. This decision was reversed for 2022
given the size of the paper backlog.
Some other actions will not reduce the backlog, but could make it less burdensome on callers. For
example, 70% of callers can also now choose to receive a callback rather than waiting on the line. The
IRS is also waiving $1.2 billion in late filing fees for 2019 and 2020 returns–fees which would have been
due when the IRS was particularly difficult to contact with questions.
The IRS has hired more CSRs even when it was funded by a continuing resolution – hiring the IRS rarely
does – and has hired more since the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2022 (P.L. 117-103) increased
funding for taxpayer services by 8.8% over the 2021 level. The number of CSRs (measured in full-time
equivalents) rose from roughly 9,000 in FY2019 to almost 13,000 in FY2021. The Accounts Management
Division, which answers most taxpayer calls, successfully hired approximately 5,000 more employees
this year.
New CSRs typically undergo the time-consuming federal hiring process and 14 weeks of training, which
kept many new hires from helping improve phone service during the 2021 and 2022 filing seasons. The

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Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2022 gave the IRS speedier direct hire authority that it intends to use
to hire 10,000 staff, including 4,000 contact representatives, a type of CSR.
P.L. 117-169, commonly referred to as the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA 2022), appropriated $1.9
billion through FY2031 for taxpayer services at the IRS, which are meant to supplement normal annual
appropriations. This funding represents a 9% increase over what the agency was projected to receive from
Congress for such services from FY2022-FY2031. Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen directed the IRS
to explain how it intends to spend the funds provided by IRA 2022 in more detail by February 2023. More
imminently, she said that the IRS intends to hire 5,000 additional CSRs and lower telephone wait times to
no more than 15 minutes by the 2023 filing season.
In the coming years, the IRS is expected to continue implementing the Taxpayer Experience Strategy that
it created in compliance with P.L. 116-25, the Taxpayer First Act of 2019. Through this strategy, the IRS
intends to further expand the use of callback technology, “time-on-hold” notifications, chat bots, digital
services, and automated responses. The strategy would also give CSRs more authority to either resolve
issues themselves or connect callers with other professionals who can do so. Additionally, the IRS is
consolidating several case management systems into one Enterprise Case Management system, which it
hopes will enable CSRs to give callers more useful answers. A new Taxpayer Experience Office within
the IRS is helping coordinate these efforts.

Author Information

Brendan McDermott

Analyst in Public Finance

Disclaimer
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