Too often, the “Service” part of “Internal Revenue Service” takes a back seat to the IRS’s goal of raising revenue. But taxpayer services need to be front and center of everything the IRS does. Efforts to improve taxpayer services at the IRS have been mixed throughout the years. A new paper put out by the National Taxpayers Union Foundation’s Taxpayers FIRST project evaluates how the IRS customer service initiatives have fared over the years, and how the IRS can improve on its core mission.
NTUF is debuting this paper alongside an event being held on Capitol Hill featuring tax policy experts open to congressional staff and media at noon on Wednesday, May 22 in the Rayburn House Office Building.
The National Taxpayers Union Foundation has convened the Taxpayers For IRS Transformation (Taxpayers FIRST) project, a collection of some of the leading tax and IRS experts in the country, to study how this money can and will change the IRS, and how some of the important issues - like customer service modernization - will play into it.
In the paper, authors Bryan Hickman and Joe Bishop-Henchman give an overview of recent IRS customer service improvements and what still needs to be done. As the authors write,
The IRS has reported substantial improvements to its taxpayer services over the past two years, many of them publicly credited to the resources provided by the IRA. Despite these positive developments, the IRS still faces customer service challenges. According to a recent report by the National Taxpayer Advocate, these include major delays in processing returns and assisting victims of identity theft, problems with phone service despite widely touted improvements, a lack of transparency, inadequate in-person services, and a significant deficiency in basic online tools.
There are three major recommendations contained in the paper, which the authors discuss at length in their overview:
1. Ensure Modernization Efforts Also Improve Customer Service.
2. Adopt More Metrics and Publicize Results.
3. Improving Services for Historically Underserved Communities.
This is the second paper in the Taxpayers FIRST series, which explores the large IRS budget boost from the Inflation Reduction Act, and the challenges that the agency now faces.
To discuss this paper or the Taxpayers FIRST project with one of the authors of the paper, please contact NTUF Communications Manager Courtney Manley at 703-299-8671 or at courtney.manley@ntu.org.
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