guess who suffers?
by 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 research
it probably won’t surprise the average tax practitioner to learn that in the american customer satisfaction index of federal agencies, the internal revenue service ranks dead last.
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it accomplished the same dubious rank in forrest research’s u.s. customer experience index of 221 companies and federal agencies.
two sad things about this:
sad thing 1: the irs ranks first in the number of “customers” it deals with, touching virtually every american directly or indirectly.
sad thing 2: though it’s tempting, we really can’t blame the people who work for the irs because there simply aren’t enough of them to do the job.
who to blame?
blame congress, the elected officials who set the federal budget. for the last 10 years, until just a few months ago, congress effectively reduced funding for the agency that brings in all the funding. despite growth in the economy, the population and the complexity of the tax code, current staff numbers are back where they were in the 1970s.
inevitably, service – and the quality of service – has been declining.
- odds of somebody answering a phone call are one in 10.
- the lucky taxpayers and practitioners who get through on the phone spend an average of 29 minutes on hold.
- taxpayer assistance centers have either closed or been stripped to skeleton crews with limited time for appointments.
- correspondence may languish for eight months or more.
- millions of taxpayers wait a year or more for refunds.
the rub
and the situation is going to get worse quickly. over the next six years, an estimated 63 percent of irs employees – 52,000 out of 83,000 – will become eligible to retire.
the shortage will start to change soon thanks to a $80 billion infusion recently authorized in the inflation reduction act. while that seems like a lot, it will be spent over the course of the next decade. but some 5,000 new customer service representatives will be hired as soon as they can be vetted, recruited and brought on board.
and there’s the rub. how quickly can the irs bring people on?
not very, says national taxpayer advocate erin m. collins.
a very clogged bottleneck
the problem, collins says in her annual report to congress, is a bottleneck at the irs’s human capital office.
and a very clogged bottleneck it is. according to nta investigation:
- the hco takes too long to approve, process and list job announcements.
- much of the delay in hiring is attributable to fingerprinting and background checks.
- the quality of job announcements is often inadequate.
- the initial screening of applicants takes too long.
- screening fails to filter out unqualified candidates.
- bundling of announcements results in various irs departments competing for the same candidates.
- resources for recruitment are inadequate.
- securing training space can be difficult.
- there’s too little communication on long-term irs training strategy and plans.
- it’s often unclear what’s happening with development of irs university.
given the need to ramp up the hiring process and the imminent retirement of so many staff, the hco needs to be especially efficient. but it seems that even with the additional funding of the inflation reduction act, the office may be incapable of improving itself.
the nta report said, “one of the best ways to expedite the current hiring process is to allow the irs additional flexibilities in hiring that bypass some of the most time-consuming and frustrating parts of the hiring process.”
the report offers several ways the hco could improve recruitment.
improving training
but recruitment’s just the start. once faster, better hiring is accomplished, collins says the irs needs to improve training. new employees can’t start working on their first day. they need extended classroom and on-the-job training. irs university is supposed to be a state-of-the-art training program, but it has yet to be fully implemented. in fact, it doesn’t even have a dedicated operating budget.
to get irsu up and running over the next five years, the irs would have to increase its $45 million per year training budget by an additional $90 million, plus a 10 percent increase each year.
better retention
once recruitment and training are up to snuff, the irs needs to do a better job of employee retention. a single turnover is estimated to cost the irs $10,000. the nta commended the irs on recent efforts to enhance retention, but the results have not been good. in 2020, the irs retained 80 percent of employees with less than one year of service. in 2021, the percentage dropped to 70 percent.
american taxpayers have a legislated right to not just service but quality service. with service deficient and quality service a dream, collins called for more and reallocated funds, better management and planning, and full implementation of irsu.