Installing this equipment is part of IRS’ Customer Service Vision to improve service to taxpayers. Objectives, Scope, and Methodology

Because of the continuing decline in taxpayers’ ability to contact an IRS assistor, we reviewed IRS’ telephone assistance program to determine the nature and extent of the accessibility problem, compare IRS’ practices with other organizations that provide telephone assistance to identify practices IRS might use to answer more calls with existing staff resources, and identify reasons why IRS has been unable to answer more taxpayers’ calls. The other sites we visited did not have this information available. It answered 36 million calls. Figure 3.1 shows the number of calls IRS has received and the minimum number of calls the National Office has scheduled the sites to answer since fiscal year 1989. This has been a major barrier to routing calls among its call sites. For fiscal year 1994, Taxpayer Services asked for 649 additional Full Time Equivalents (FTEs) to answer about 4 million more calls in 1994. We see no reason why IRS cannot apply the same management principles to increasing the number of taxpayer calls that IRS answers. Consequently, our recommendations are focused on maximizing service with existing resources. Recommendations

We recommend that the Commissioner of Internal Revenue direct the Chief, Taxpayer Services, in coordination with other appropriate IRS officials, to lead an aggressive effort to (1) identify and define the appropriate telephone assistance program operating practices for IRS that would allow it to optimize the number of calls it can answer within current budget constraints and (2) work with the leadership of NTEU to reach agreement on implementing those practices on a nationwide basis.
Why GAO Did This Study

Pursuant to a legislative requirement and a congressional request, GAO examined the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) telephone assistance program, focusing on: (1) the nature and extent of taxpayers' accessibility problems; (2) a comparison of IRS practices with those of other organizations providing telephone assistance; and (3) the reasons IRS has been unable to answer more calls.

What GAO Found

GAO found that IRS: (1) has not kept pace with the increasing number of calls received over fiscal years (FY) 1989 to 1994; (2) answered about the same number of calls each year, about 36 million, even though the telephone answering staff declined; (3) answered about one out of two calls in FY 1989, but only one out of four calls in FY 1994; (4) has improved its ability to route calls among call sites and provide assistors with taxpayers' account information; (5) telephone management practices have not kept pace with those of other organizations; (6) could apply additional telephone management practices to answer more calls with existing resources; (7) provides taxpayer telephone assistance to a much lesser extent than other organizations; (8) and the National Treasury Employment Union have reached an agreement to work together to implement the IRS Customer Service Vision, which is designed to optimize the number of taxpayer calls IRS answers; and (9) could take aggressive actions to better manage its existing resources to answer more calls.