{"id":363,"date":"2015-07-20T12:12:59","date_gmt":"2015-07-20T17:12:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cookco.us\/news\/?p=363"},"modified":"2015-07-20T12:12:59","modified_gmt":"2015-07-20T17:12:59","slug":"taxpayer-service-at-the-irs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cookco.us\/news\/taxpayer-service-at-the-irs\/","title":{"rendered":"Taxpayer Service at the IRS"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I received this email from a taxpayer last week, I realized that things are perhaps even worse than I imagined in my recent article<\/span><\/u><\/a>.<\/h3>\n

I need to set up an appointment to see you.\u00a0 IRS will not answer their phones,\u00a0 will not respond to emails, and sent my Overnight UPS correspondence back to me with no cover letter or address. They obviously did not even read my letter to them.\u00a0 At this point I do not know how to get in touch with them.\u00a0 I have gone to the\u00a0IRS office twice,\u00a0 but after two hours each time,\u00a0 they never called me back and only took care of 3 people while I was waiting. I am at my wits end.\u00a0If you think you can help me establish a line of communication with them,\u00a0 it would be worth my trip to see you. I’ll email you a copy of my latest letter to them when I get home. Right now I’m still waiting at their office. Any chance of seeing you\u00a0sometime next week?\u00a0 Thanks. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"IRS<\/a>
IRS Customer Service<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The taxpayer also forwarded a photo he snapped while he was sitting there waiting. In the Taxpayer Advocate’s Annual Report to Congress, we got a small glimpse of recent activity:<\/p>\n

So-called courtesy disconnects \u2014 phone calls for which the IRS switchboard essentially hangs up because it’s overloaded \u2014 soared to approximately 8.8 million during the 2015 tax filing season from roughly 544,000 in 2014.<\/p>\n

The IRS answered 37% of taxpayer calls routed to customer service representatives between Jan. 1 and April 18, and the hold time for those who got through averaged 23 minutes. That marked a steep drop from 2014, when the IRS answered 71% of its calls and hold times averaged roughly 14 minutes.<\/p>\n

The IRS answered 17% of calls from taxpayers notified that their tax returns had been blocked on suspicion of identity theft. Holding times for those calls averaged 28 minutes. During three consecutive weeks of the filing season, the IRS answered less than 10% of the calls.<\/p>\n

Taxpayers who sought IRS paper forms and publications also faced frustration, because libraries and U.S. Postal Service branches did not receive the material until Feb. 28, nearly halfway through the filing season. Once supplies ran out at the locations, no more were available.<\/p>\n

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<\/h3>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I received this email from a taxpayer last week, I realized that things are perhaps even worse than I imagined in my recent article. I need to set up an appointment to see you.\u00a0 IRS will not answer their phones,\u00a0 will not respond to emails, and sent my Overnight UPS correspondence back to me […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2016-03-17T16:39:15Z","apple_news_api_id":"033d11ae-60d4-4f3f-8559-79a93f08a415","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2016-03-17T16:39:15Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAD\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/w==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AAz0RrmDUTz-FWXmpPwikFQ","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookco.us\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookco.us\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookco.us\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookco.us\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookco.us\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cookco.us\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookco.us\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookco.us\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookco.us\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}