The Tax Times: Need to Call Practitioners Hotline

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Need to Call Practitioners Hotline – Expect to Wait > 1HR!

According to IRS National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson, it will take practitioners an average of 52 minutes to get through to the IRS on its dedicated telephone line in 2015.

Speaking at the American Institute of CPAs National Tax Conference, Olson says it will also take the taxpaying public 34 minutes to get questions about Form 1040 answered.

She previously provided essentially the same statistics in a written statement for the hearing before US House of Representatives IRS oversight committee, on February 26, 2014 where she also said:

The IRS is failing badly at meeting taxpayer needs because it lacks resources.

Last year, the IRS received some 109 million telephone calls on its customer service lines.
The IRS could answer only 60.5 percent of calls seeking to reach a customer service representative (CSR)
Those taxpayers who got through had to wait an average of 17.6 minutes on hold.
Initial statistics for fiscal year (FY) 2014 indicate service has declined even more, with taxpayers waiting an average of more than 20 minutes and tax practitioners kept on hold for more than half an hour.
IRS funding reductions do not punish the IRS nearly as much as they punish the nearly 150 million individual taxpayers and more than 10 million business entity taxpayers who are trying to comply with the tax laws and not receiving the help they need.
When the IRS receives 109 million telephone calls, there is no substitute for the funding to hire enough CSRs to answer them.
If the IRS does not receive more funding, the IRS will be unable to assist millions of taxpayers seeking assistance from their government to comply with the tax laws.

Now with a Republican-controlled Senate and the tax-exempt debacle regarding the IRS and the Republican Party; you can expect the IRS' budget to diminish even further!

So if your professional and you don't want to wait nearly an hour or more for transcripts on Practitioner Priority Service; I suggest you review our blog post IRS Enhances Transcript Delivery System On-Line! to enable you to obtain transcripts within five days on line.

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