one solution is modeled on 311 service.
by 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 research
here’s the understatement of the day, if not the century, from the tax advocacy service’s annual report to congress 2019:
taxpayers often have difficulty locating irs personnel who can provide accurate and responsive information regarding their cases
we’d be tempted to say, “well, duh” if it weren’t such a serious issue.
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how serious? as the tas report points out, “although taxpayers are required by law to pay their duly owed taxes, they are also the agency’s ‘customers.’ the agency’s failure to adequately engage these customers cannot cause taxpayers to take their business elsewhere, but it will jeopardize the voluntary compliance on which the u.s tax system depends.”
as a result, the report says, “the challenges faced by taxpayers when attempting to contact irs personnel knowledgeable about their accounts pose substantial risks to all parties.” (emphasis added)
those parties include not just taxpayer and tax practitioners but the big one – the united states of america. if the nation’s revenue collector loses the good will of voluntarily compliant taxpayers, the nation loses any hope of greatness.
this is not the first time the tas has warned congress about an irs communication problem. the warnings have been coming since 2008. progress has yet to lift the agency from dead-last in quality communication among 15 federal agencies.
confusion, frustration, misinformation
the report says that taxpayers looking for the information they need to file honest, accurate returns must
- interpret obscure irs acronyms and function names,
- navigate a complex and multifaceted phone tree, and
- identify unnamed and often-changing responsible irs officials.
the result of their journey: “taxpayers are left floundering on the rocks of confusion, frustration and misinformation.”
what tax practitioner has not floundered on those very same rocks? who has not suffered the ignominies identified, once again, by the tas?
- the letters designed to suppress followup phone calls
- the limitation on when taxpayers can receive answers to law questions
- the lack of phone directories of personnel
- the lack of any telephone access to certain crucial irs units
- the lack of a real person answering the phone at a taxpayer assistance center
- the difficulty of getting an appointment at at tac
- the kafkaesque maze of the irs phone system
kafkaesque? more like dantean. the recorded greeting of the irs phone system might as well be “abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”
the tas report offers a tour through the infernal rings of the service’s telephone labyrinth. the hellish odyssey is presented on several pages of cell-phone screenshots following a hypothetical taxpayer through an almost endless obstacle course of button-pressing. in the end, the caller gets put on hold for a full hour, at which point the taxpayer, heart o’er-flowing with gladness, hangs up.
at one point in the maze, a recording informs the caller that setting up a payment agreement by phone can cost as much as $225 a month but perhaps only $31 if done online.
attentiveness is crucial.
the tas says that irs attentiveness is crucial because clear and effective communication makes taxpayers more likely to
- trust the agency,
- do what is asked of them,
- skip expensive customer service channels,
- view the agency more positively and
- forgive the agency when it makes a mistake.
and, it could be added, “pay their share of taxes.”
the tas suggests a solution that tax practitioners should rally to support: a 311-type phone system that promptly connects calls to operators with a pulse who provide quick answers or transfers to an appropriate office. the tas suggests that the system fit within a more comprehensive omnichannel environment that emulates private industry by utilizing customer experience mapping and customer journey analytics.
such a system, the tas says, should be a “centerpiece of (the irs’s) effort to improve communication and overall customer experience.”
take a moment from your busy season and imagine this: you call the irs. before the second ring you hear a human voice. within moments, you are transferred to another human being, one who has the information you need.
and from the bottom of your tax-practitioner heart, you say, “thank you.”
and the human being on the other end says, “thank you for calling your internal revenue service!”