TIGTA: Most taxpayers prefer contacts with the IRS be by telephone

Yes, you read that right. That's a direct quote from a recently released Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) report.

Most taxpayers prefer contacts with the IRS be by telephone.

My jaw dropped when I read this statement, which TIGTA states is based on research, though they don't footnote the source of this research. To be clear, TIGTA is making this statement because it thinks the IRS should be doing more to encourage taxpayers to phone the IRS automated self-service phone system to make routine requests for tax information. TIGTA calls it the "Integrated Customer Communication Environment" (ICCE). I call it the 800 robo-phone.

But maybe I'm atypical. Maybe most taxpayers really do prefer the phone when dealing with the IRS.

So I thought I would collect a little bit of (highly unscientific but still interesting) data via a poll here:



TIGTA makes this claim in the context of a report about how best to serve taxpayers who are requesting transcripts of their tax information. Some people need such documents for verification of mortgage or financial aid applications or divorce settlement negotiations. Other taxpayers have lost their copies of their documents due to natural disasters or personal disorganization. Still other taxpayers are trying to figure out exactly how the IRS has credited their quarterly estimated tax payments.

Such taxpayers currently have two options.

Option #1) You can fill out a Form 4506-T, a very simple document, and fax or mail it to the IRS. Name, address, SSN, a couple of checkmarks, list the tax years for which you are seeking information, sign and date, stick it in the fax machine or in an envelope and send it off. Total time involved: 5 minutes maximum.

Option #2) You can call the IRS main toll-free number to access the IRS phone system, which TIGTA calls the "Integrated Customer Communication Environment" (ICCE). If you call ICCE, you get to waste a good bit of time listening to a series of menu prompts relating to irrelevant options before hearing the options with the right number to press for tax transcripts. If you are lucky, and press all the right buttons, and the stars align properly, you might--in theory--be able to complete the transaction without needing to talk to a human being. If you are not so lucky, and the stars don't line up, you will press all the buttons and wind up being told that you need to stay on the line and wait on hold for some indefinite period of time so that a human being can follow up with more questions. This could take a LOT longer than 5 minutes.

One of my relatives recently needed a transcript of her tax payments, because of concerns that the IRS might have credited a quarterly estimated tax payment for 2009 to her 2008 liability by mistake. Since TIGTA was pushing the ICCE robo-phone option so enthusiastically in its report, I encouraged her to try out the robo-phone option.

To make sure she did everything correctly, I had her put the phone on its speakerphone setting so I could verify that she was answering all the prompts properly. The menu prompts had changed and lengthened considerably from the dialog that TIGTA had published in the report it released just a few days ago, so it took about five minutes for her to listen it to it all and punch in all the appropriate required responses. After she'd done all that, the robo-voice finally informed her that she would have to stay on the line to wait to speak with a live human. The predicted wait was "10 to 15 minutes." According to TIGTA, this should not have happened. If she had entered all the information correctly, as we were quite sure she had done, the TIGTA report said that she wouldn't need to wait on hold for a human. But just in case, I had her hang up and try one going through the whole robo-menu option system more time. So she hung up and tried again, being very, very careful--same result. Her situation was very straightforward. No change of address. Not a joint return. Just requesting her 2008 transcript.

Out of curiosity, I decided to try requesting a transcript of my own tax history for myself. I listened to all the same robo-prompts, pressed the required keys, and so on. Eventually the system determined that I was requesting information for a joint return with my husband, and that was enough for the robo-voice to insist that I had to talk to a live human being. By the time I called, the live human beings were no longer on duty (after 10 p.m. Eastern time), so I was told to call again tomorrow to talk to a human.

According to TIGTA, phone requests save the IRS a lot of money, because most of them can be handled by the automated ICCE robo-voice system. But at least in the two cases in my family, the robo-voice system ultimately kicked us over to live human beings, who would cost the IRS a lot more money than the robo-phone menu tree system.

And my relative would have wasted a lot of time waiting on hold for the live person to come on line. It was a lot easier to hang up and just fax in the form.

UPDATE 11/27/09: Although the TIGTA report claimed that taxpayers who requested their returns via sending in a paper form might face delays of six to eight weeks or more in receiving their transcripts, my relative received her transcript today, just 23 days after she mailed the form in. In her case, that was plenty of time for her purposes. That's just one datapoint, of course, and others are welcome to email me about their experiences. TIGTA states that the IRS is required to respond with 60 days, but that the IRS missed that deadline in 39% of the cases it studied. The longest delay TIGTA spotted in their audit was 222 days.

Joanne Passineau, award-winning IRS employee

Our Union College VITA site is extraordinarily fortunate to have an outstanding IRS employee, Joanne Passineau, a senior tax consultant from the Albany IRS office, as our VITA site relationship manager.

Joanne is shown above receiving the much deserved Community Impact Award from the United Way of the Greater Capital District at their annual award ceremony on behalf of her entire team of outstanding IRS employees in the Albany Stakeholder, Partnerships, Education, and Communication Office (SPEC).

Joanne and her Albany team truly embody the very best of the word "Service" in the name of the Internal Revenue Service. Time and again, our IRS tax consultants have gone above and beyond the call of duty to help the volunteers at area VITA sites carry out our mission of helping low and moderate income taxpayers comply with an exceptionally complex tax law.

They have given up countless nights and weekends with their families to help us out during crunch training and filing seasons. They have given us their cell phone numbers and home phone numbers. They have tracked down missing orders for training manuals and software. They have researched tricky tax questions for us. They have helped us troubleshoot glitches in software and weird e-file error messages. They have kept us up to date about the latest changes in tax law as Congress tinkers with the tax code right up to beginning of filing season, and sometimes even in the middle of filing season.

They have served, and they have served, and they have served!

IRS employees don't write the tax law. Congress does that.

It's the job of the IRS to carry out the tax law, to help taxpayers who want to comply with the law, and to enforce the tax law on those who don't want to comply.

Most people think of the IRS in its punitive enforcement role, and that's certainly an important role for the IRS. Human nature being what it is, there will always be a need for auditors and the criminal investigation departments of the IRS.

But it's also important to remember that the majority of Americans are law-abiding and want to comply with their tax obligations, and a critical service role for the IRS is to help those taxpayers who want to abide by the law do so in the least burdensome way possible.

VITA sites are designed to help those taxpayers who don't want to cut any corners, who want help in filing completely accurate tax returns that will secure all tax benefits to which they are legally entitled, while keeping them totally on the right side of the law.

Joanne's team at the IRS SPEC office has done an outstanding job of supporting our VITA site and many other VITA sites around the Capital District. Our college VITA site has had many superb IRS employees as our relationship managers over the years. Mary Ellen Sousie was our first IRS relationship manager, who helped my predecessor, Therese McCarty, and her students to launch the Union College VITA site back in January 2005.

I can honestly say that I would not have agreed to take over Union's VITA program in its second season if Therese had not raved so enthusiastically about Mary Ellen's terrific support. Mary Ellen was a tough act to follow, and when she was transferred to another position, I was in considerable despair. I thought to myself, "Surely, Mary Ellen was one of a kind. There couldn't possibly be another IRS employee as willing to go the extra mile as Mary Ellen was." But I have since learned that I was wrong, as we've had a long stream of outstanding IRS liaisons. Patti Faulkner, Kathy McNulty, and Joanne Passineau have all been standout rock-stars as our IRS relationship managers. Other IRS SPEC employees in the Albany office have pitched in enthusiastically and energetically whenever our officially designated liaison was out of the office on temporary duty elsewhere, for example, traveling to a military base to train VITA preparers there.



Our experiences with the Albany IRS SPEC office have put an entirely new face on the IRS (seated: Senior Tax Consultant Patricia Faulkner, Senior Tax Consultant Joanne Passineau; Standing: Senior Tax Consultant Barbara Pielo, Senior Tax Consultant Shelley Willette, Tax Consultant Kathy McNulty). They are shown above with yet another award they recently won, along with the Buffalo SPEC, the IRS SPEC Director's Choice award.

You can tell they love their jobs. Many of them are former auditors. By contrast, their current jobs are proactive and supportive. When they answer my phone calls, I can always hear the enthusiasm in their voices as they greet me, ready to tackle my latest question about the tricky bed buffalo I've encountered in a VITA taxpayer's situation.

My students and I can see clearly that the IRS mission is not just about helping to catch the bad guys after the fact. It's also about serving the vast majority of Americans who want to be the good guys to file accurate tax returns!

Dow Jones: IRS Would Play Starring Role In Health-Care Overhaul

Thomas Barthold, chief of staff on the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, told Grassley during a Finance panel session that the cost to IRS of hiring additional personnel to implement the health legislation is not counted in the official score of the bill. The JCT, he said, assumes that the IRS will do the best it can with the resources it already has.

Dow Jones: IRS Would Play Starring Role in Health-Care (hat tip: Paul Caron)

Brilliant, just brilliant! So this "no cost to implement--we'll just let the IRS do it" approach means that the IRS will have fewer resources available to do its primary job of collecting taxes. Talk about "creative financing." They don't seem to be counting the cost of the taxes that will go uncollected as a result of diverting IRS resources into a new job of overseeing health care.

Of course, this could all work beautifully....if ONLY Congress would get serious about simplifying the income tax code. If the tax code were simpler, the IRS wouldn't need so many people to do their basic job, and then they'd easily have the manpower to spare to run health care too. But as long as Congress continues to load on redundant provision after provision into the tax code (e.g., multiple different "flavors" of tax-advantaged savings plans for retirement, multiple flavors of savings plans for college, multiple different tax breaks for owner-occupied housing, etc.), the IRS is really overloaded already with more than enough to do.