WASHINGTON — The IRS provided poor customer service during this year’s tax filing season as taxpayers struggled with a rise in identity theft and complications related to President Barack Obama’s health care law, a government watchdog said Wednesday.
A new report by the National Taxpayer Advocate says the IRS has been hampered by budget cuts.
The report says the IRS blocked nearly 1.6 million suspicious tax refunds this year because of concerns about identity theft. About a third of the refunds turned out to be legitimate, but for long stretches during tax season, fewer than 10 percent of callers could get through to an IRS help line.
“For the majority of taxpayers who filed their returns and did not require IRS assistance, the filing season was generally successful,” said the report by Nina Olson.
“For the segment of taxpayers who required help from the IRS, the filing season was by far the worst in memory,” the report said. “To a significant degree, the IRS’s shortcomings are budget-driven.”
The taxpayer advocate is an independent office within the IRS.
Overall, only 37 percent of people who called the IRS for help during tax season were able to reach a person, the report said. For those who got through, the average time on hold was 23 minutes.
IRS help lines were so overloaded that the system hung up on 8.8 million callers, the report said. That’s a huge jump from last year, when the IRS hung up on 544,000 callers.
The system hangs up early in the call, rather than making callers wait on hold, only to be disconnected later.
Congress has cut the agency’s budget by $1.2 billion since 2010, and House Republicans are proposing more cuts next year.
