irs insists your call is important. but the numbers don’t add up.
the 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 busy season barometer:
new year, new strategies
join the survey. get the results.
by 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 research
nothing kills a day like a phone call to the internal revenue service. a caller put on hold during the busy season literally has enough time to go out to lunch and come back before anyone answers.
more on tax season 2020: does irs need a practitioner services division? | slow start for tax pro e-filing | irs urged to form tax pro strategy | accountants cautiously bullish on economy | tax pros forecast better 2020 | can irs enforce the tax code? | tax pros upbeat on busy season | irs undertakes overhaul
exclusively for pro members. log in here or 2022世界杯足球排名 today.
unfortunately, given the inhuman complexity of the irs tax code, taxpayers often need to call for guidance or advice. last year, 99.3 million did so, and only 28.6 million of them actually hung on long enough to talk with someone. over the course of the year, the average time it took to get connected was 16.2 minutes.
the odds were a little better for practitioners calling the practitioner priority service. of the 3.5 million attempts to get through, 2.1 million were answered. that leaves some 1.4 million who just said, “…”
the taxpayer advocacy service, which has kept a tally of phone calls over the years, doesn’t know exactly what the unsuccessful tax pros said before hanging up, but it’s a fair guess that it wasn’t “god bless america.”
the tas does have a term, however, for the act of hanging up before getting put on hold. it’s called primary abandonment. hanging up after getting put on hold is called secondary abandonment. apparently, there is no tertiary abandonment, but that might be a good term for what a taxpayer does after finally getting connected to someone who can’t help.
in 2019, out of 99 million calls, 25 million were primary abandonments, and 11 million were secondary abandonments.
the most painful statistic is that taxpayers calling the installment agreement/balance due line to make payment arrangements were able to get through to a live person only 26 percent of the time, and the wait time of the patient, patriotic taxpayers averaged around 45 minutes.
the accounts management line wasn’t much better, with flesh-and-blood irs agents answering only 28 percent of calls.
the tas says that the irs does not know why so many people are not willing to be put on hold, that maybe some research might lead to a solution. in fact, the tax payer first act, passed last year, requires the irs to do something about the long wait-times and high abandonment. the act specifies that the use of a call-back service— a common technology among corporations through which callers can leave their phone number and then go about their business until the company calls back. the irs tested such a system last year but has yet to be implemented.
the 2019 national taxpayer advocate report to congress says: “if the irs cannot keep up with call volumes on the phone lines and taxpayers experience long hold times, this technology will prevent the irs from losing the taxpayer who is presumably contacting the irs in an effort to comply with the tax laws.”
over the long term, irs efforts to steer people toward web-based solutions and information have reduced dependence on the phone and live agents, but the curve may be turning upward again. the service received 116.7 million calls in 2015 and 117.5 million in 2016. the number dropped to 95.6 million in 2017 but then climbed to 98.5 million in 2018 before rising again in 2019. for all anyone knows, people are calling the irs to find out how to use the convoluted irs.gov site that’s supposed to obviate phone calls.