IRS is in a ‘deep hole’ with jammed phone lines, big backlogs
Can’t get through to the IRS phone line? Still waiting to resolve your 2020 taxes?
A lot of people share your frustration.
“Getting someone on the phone is a challenge, and if you do, the question is whether they’re trained and able to help,” said Thad Inge, legislative counsel for the National Association of Enrolled Agents, an organization of tax professionals.
National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins found that, among other problems at IRS, callers were rarely able to reach an Internal Revenue Service employee.
She blamed the agency’s problems on a “toxic combination” of inadequate staffing, COVID-19-related problems, and new tasks assigned to the Internal Revenue Service, such as distributing economic stimulus payments.
Collins told the Senate Finance Committee Thursday that one problem is that the IRS gets millions of callers and there are not enough people available to handle that sort of volume.
Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, cited another problem: “Companies are charging taxpayers hundreds or even up to a thousand dollars for the ability to cut the line and get through to the IRS by phone,” he said.
“This is an insult added to injury for typical Americans, and it’s a direct result of Republican budget cuts that have broken a basic government service.”
How to get help
The good news is that the IRS is aware of the problems and is trying to hire more staff. “They are trying and making adjustments as best they can but more needs to be done,” said Inge.
IRS’ Sacramento office at 4330 Watt Avenue is open for appointments Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. IRS also has assistance centers throughout the state, including Fresno and Modesto, where the weekday hours are the same as Sacramento.
If you file electronically and have set up direct deposit – and the IRS has no questions – things should be fine. If you’re due a refund, it should show up in your account within 21 days of filing.
But millions are likely to fall outside that category, and they’re probably in for delays.
“There are millions of tax returns and pieces of correspondence that the IRS received last year but could not process. It is therefore starting the 2022 filing season in a deep hole,” Collins told a House Ways and Means subcommittee last week at a hearing on “Challenges Facing Taxpayers.”
IRS’ most annoying problems
Below are the most anticipated – and in most cases already apparent – problems people are likely to face, according to the National Taxpayers Advocate’s Office, the agents’ group and reader comments to The Sacramento Bee.
▪ Phones. Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Charles Rettig told reporters recently that IRS phone lines will be jammed “for the foreseeable future.”
The numbers explain why: Last year, people who tried to call the IRS’ toll free line got through to an employee only 11% of the time, Collins said Thursday.
“As a result, most callers could not obtain answers to their tax law questions, get help with account problems, or speak with a (representative) about a compliance notice,” she said. If someone did reach an IRS staffer, it was after waiting on hold an average of 23 minutes.
▪ Website issues. Collins found that taxpayers tried to check the status of their refunds on IRS.gov more than 632 million times last year.
But, she said, the “Where’s My Refund?” site “does not provide information on unprocessed returns, and it does not explain any status delays, the reasons for delays, where returns stand in the processing pipeline, or what actions taxpayers need to take, if any.” The “Where’s My Amended Return?” site had similar problems.
“For taxpayers who experienced significant refund delays, these tools often did not answer the questions they were designed to address and added to overall frustrations,” Collins said.
▪ 2020 backlog. It’s still there. A big reason involves paper returns. “Paper is the IRS’s Kryptonite and…the IRS is still buried in it,” Collins said. Ten percent of taxpayers file paper returns; the rest file electronically.
She found that as of late December 2021, the IRS had backlogs of 6 million unprocessed original individual returns and 2.3 million unprocessed amended individual returns Some of the returns were sent as long ago as April.
A big reason for all the delay is an overworked, overwhelmed staff, lawmakers and tax experts agree.
“Taxpayers should understand that the budget cuts to the IRS over the last decade, compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic, has really hamstrung the agency,” said Rep. Judy Chu, D-Pasadena, a subcommittee member who is seeking more funding for the IRS.
Collins agreed. “I think infusing capital into the IRS is very important,” she said.
IRS is trying to hire more people, and congressional lawmakers are generally sympathetic to the calls for more funding.
Meanwhile, taxpayers can make things easier, Collins said.
Don’t file on paper. Use direct deposit. And “triple check for errors,” she advised.
“So if we can get those three things right,” Collins said, “it’ll make a huge difference.”
This story was originally published February 17, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
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