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Phone Calls Overwhelm IRS System
Due to the ACA tax consequences associated with the individual mandate, monitoring the IRS is more important than ever. To that end, the IRS recently reported that it hung up on more than 8 million customers during tax filing season. This process, referred to as customer service agents as “courtesy disconnects”, occurs when too many people call at once. A person will “answer” the phone for a brief second, and then hang up on the customer, rather than ask the caller to wait on the line for more than an hour. Only 40 percent of people who weren’t disconnected actually got to speak to a representative—after waiting 30 or more minutes.
Comparatively, last year, customer service dropped 360,000 calls. The overwhelmed phone system is a direct result of the IRS diverting $134 million in user fees to other areas of interest, as Congress had recently slashed their budget. To read more about the IRS budget issues, click here.
Due to the ACA tax consequences associated with the individual mandate, monitoring the IRS is more important than ever. To that end, the IRS recently reported that it hung up on more than 8 million customers during tax filing season. This process, referred to as customer service agents as “courtesy disconnects”, occurs when too many people call at once. A person will “answer” the phone for a brief second, and then hang up on the customer, rather than ask the caller to wait on the line for more than an hour. Only 40 percent of people who weren’t disconnected actually got to speak to a representative—after waiting 30 or more minutes.
Comparatively, last year, customer service dropped 360,000 calls. The overwhelmed phone system is a direct result of the IRS diverting $134 million in user fees to other areas of interest, as Congress had recently slashed their budget. To read more about the IRS budget issues, click here.
