Ring! Ring! IRS Not Answering

Jeremy Springer
Oct 8
3 min read

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) recently did an audit to assess efforts to improve toll-free telephone access and reduce taxpayers’ wait times when calling the IRS for assistance.

Every year, millions of taxpayers seek assistance from the IRS via its toll-free and international telephone lines. The services offered through these telephone lines include answering federal tax questions, ordering tax forms, providing taxpayers with pre-recorded messages related to various tax topics, information on the status of their refunds, and information about a letter or notice they received. However, millions of taxpayers are still unable to obtain assistance from the IRS on the telephone due to various reasons such as technical difficulties, busy telephone lines, etc.

The Taxpayer Bill of Rights provides taxpayers with the right to be informed, which includes the right to know what they need to do to comply with tax laws. Taxpayers also have the right to quality service, which includes the right to receive prompt assistance, and to receive clear and easily understandable communications from the IRS. If a taxpayer sets their expectations for interacting with the IRS based on the reported average wait times and level of service (LOS), when their experience is different, they may grow frustrated and hang up leaving their issue unresolved.

What TIGTA Found

The IRS tracks and widely reports two customer service performance measures related to its telephone lines: LOS and average wait times. According to the IRS, the LOS measures the ability for a taxpayer to reach a telephone assistor when requested. For the 2024 Filing Season, the IRS reported an LOS of 88 percent and wait times averaging 3 minutes. However, the reported LOS and average wait times only included calls made to 33 Accounts Management (AM) telephone lines during the filing season. These lines handled approximately two-thirds of all calls answered by IRS assistors.

The IRS separately tracks an Enterprise LOS, which is a broader measure of the taxpayer experience because it includes 27 telephone lines from other IRS business units in addition to the 33 AM telephone lines. These 27 telephone lines handled approximately one-third of all calls answered by IRS telephone assistors. In addition, the IRS does not widely report an Enterprise-wide wait time as the reported average wait time computation includes only the 33 AM telephone lines. According to IRS data, the average wait times for the other telephone lines were much longer than 3 minutes, averaging 17 to 19 minutes during the 2024 Filing Season.

Because of high demand for service during the filing season, the IRS temporarily reassigns employees from other job responsibilities to answer calls. This helps improve the average reported wait time and LOS during the filing season. However, similar telephone service measures for the entire fiscal year are not widely reported and varied considerably. For example, the AM LOS ranged from a low of 48 percent in June 2024 to a high of 92 percent in January 2024. Similarly, the Enterprise LOS ranged from a low of 45 percent in June 2024 to a high of 77 percent in February 2024.

Separately, the IRS is currently developing a new measure to track the percentage of calls in which the telephone assistor resolves a taxpayer’s issue during the first contact.

What TIGTA Recommended

TIGTA recommended that the Chief, Taxpayer Services, should widely report to the public: (1) both the Enterprise LOS and AM LOS throughout the entire fiscal year; and (2) the average wait times throughout the entire fiscal year for all telephone lines that provide live assistance to taxpayers.

The IRS disagreed with both recommendations stating that the LOS metric does not provide information to determine taxpayer experience when calling, and including wait times for telephone lines outside the main helpline would be confusing to the public. TIGTA maintains that whether a taxpayer can reach an assistor is part of the taxpayer experience and providing average wait times across all telephone lines for the entire fiscal year demonstrates transparency.

Legal Disclaimer: This post contains general information for taxpayers and should not be relied upon as the only source of authority. Taxpayers should seek professional tax advice for more information. This information was current at time of posting; we are not responsible for updating this or any blog post/article for subsequent changes in the law or its interpretation.