New telephone service problems for the IRS

Taxpayers who can’t resolve their issues with the IRS can turn to the Taxpayer Advocate Service. But phoning the service is likely to bring frustration of its own. That comes to light after a look-see by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. Details now from TIGTA’s chief of staff for inspections and evaluations, Eleina Monroe.

Interview transcript: 

Tom Temin 
All right, so you got a tip, is that fair to say, to check out the phone lines of the Taxpayer Advocate Service?

Eleina Monroe 
Yes, that is accurate. We did receive a referral from another OIG, and it was from a tax practitioner who was representing a taxpayer who was experiencing a financial hardship that was trying to contact the TAS service for assistance.

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Tom Temin 
All right. And so it couldn’t get through on the telephone. Then tell us about what you did, how you looked into it.

Eleina Monroe 
So what we did was we looked at all 76 lines, both on the IRS and the TAS website. And we called them to see what the status was for each line, and we were able to identify some issues in which we communicated that with the IRS.

Tom Temin
Sure. And before we get to the issues, give us an extent of the system here. Why do they have 76 phone numbers? Why not just 1-800 Taxpayer Advocate?

Eleina Monroe 
These are local lines. So depending on where you’re at, you can go on their website and find from the state that you’re in a local Taxpayer Advocate Service line for your office.

Tom Temin 
Is that a legacy of some era when tax zones operated by the IRS didn’t communicate online as much as they do nowadays?

Eleina Monroe 
It probably does extend from that. I know back from when RRA 98 was passed, there were some requirements that had both the IRS and other organizations with the IRS who were required to develop local telephone lines.

Tom Temin 
Ok, so they’ve got 76 of them. That’s more than one in every state. And do we know how many people are behind each line? That is, is it one person? Or is there like a mini call center that is associated with each local line?

Eleina Monroe 
From our understanding, it is not a call center. So we don’t have the exact staffing for each office, but we do know that it is a local office for each line.

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Tom Temin 
All right, so your folks in the IG audit area then called all 76 numbers. What happened?

Eleina Monroe 
Two of the lines weren’t in service. 56 were sent directly to voicemail. We had 16 that the voicemail box was full, and two we were able to reach a live operator.

Tom Temin 
So out of 76 lines, two of them were picked up by people. Imagine that, a telephone. And you mentioned that some of the messages were outdated. That implies that no one answered, and people got an automated message. Tell us more about the outdated messages, what people were hearing.

Eleina Monroe 
For some of the messages, we heard messages referencing COVID-19 pandemic related messages, and then for some of them, they were just saying that the office was closed or they can’t take the call right now.

Tom Temin 
And also, you found inconsistency in what was being delivered to the message through those automated answers. And there is some standard language they’re supposed to have, correct?

Eleina Monroe 
Yes. So according to the IRM there are standardized language that is assigned for telephone lines, and so that’s one of the things that we recommended for them.

Tom Temin 
When you did get a person answer, then what happened? Hey, I’m the IG, just checking to see if you pick up?

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Eleina Monroe 
In these instances, we actually were posing as taxpayers. So we did not actually reveal to them that we were part of TIGTA, it was our goal to try to get the taxpayer experience.

Tom Temin 
And when the mailbox was full, then you just got a hang up, or what happens then?

Eleina Monroe 
Yes, the call was disconnected after the mailbox was full.

Tom Temin 
And in some instances, people were promised to call back, but that never happened. I guess that’s what happened to the person that originally tipped off the other IG that then called you that the person never did get any resolution after some months.

Eleina Monroe 
Right. So initially, the tax practitioner, who was representing the taxpayer, who was experiencing a financial hardship, requesting assistance from TAS. When they called the IRS, it was weeks and they had not heard back anything. And then additional times that they tried calling, the voice mailbox was full. So our initial review, we tested that specific line, and then that’s what helped us to expand for all 76 lines.

Tom Temin 
Sure. We’re speaking with Eleina Monroe. She’s chief of staff of the Office of Inspections and Valuations at the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. So what were some of your chief recommendations, I guess, fix this, what were specifics that you think tasks ought to do?

Eleina Monroe 
So what we do, because we’re with the inspections and Evaluations Office, and one of the things that we’ve been doing to partner with both IRS and TAS is creating these email alerts that help them to take immediate action, so that when we issue our report, we’re not issuing a recommendation that requires an actionable item, unless if there’s something new that came up prior to issuance of our report. In this instance, we issued four recommendations within the email alert that we sent, and we were able to get those action items addressed immediately. For example, the first one was to properly monitor the TAS lines and check voicemails throughout the day to avoid the full voicemail box. So we were able to get them to do that, update information and make sure that the information was consistent through the IRS and TAS website, and they agreed to that as well. We also asked them to update their scripts to ensure that there was consistent messaging throughout for their voicemail box messaging. And they did agree to that as well, and also to provide a reasonable callback response within about 48 hours, we recommended for messages. That one was a partial agreement only because of the fact that TAS does not get that many cases coming in through the phone, and given the resources that they have, it could be difficult for them to implement.

Tom Temin 
They said the telephone queries are a very tiny percentage, I think 1% of all the cases that they get.

Eleina Monroe 
Right, exactly.

Tom Temin 
Well, does it strike you that maybe there’s a bigger issue behind all this? Why do they have 76 separate little offices with lines? Did they talk about the idea that maybe all of the calls could be routed so that doesn’t matter where the person is that answers, as long as they can answer the question.

Eleina Monroe 
Well our goal here was to focus strictly on what they offered taxpayers, and in this instance, we want to make sure that they’re delivering on the services that they provide to these taxpayers. We didn’t look specifically in that area, but we just wanted to make sure that they were functioning properly.

Tom Temin 
And so you did this early in this year, in 2024 all this happened. Any plans to call all 76 again to see what happens?

Eleina Monroe 
Well, at this time, we haven’t released our annual report, but we plan to release it in October, and that will give you a better idea what we’re going to be doing for the next year. We usually have all of our program related reviews listed on there, and that’s on our tigta.gov website.

Tom Temin 
When you have a quiet moment, do you ever wish you could say, well, let me just pick up the phone and try Dallas and see what happens at the taxpayer’s office.

Eleina Monroe 
One of the things we did do, was when they said they implemented these recommendations, we did call to make sure that the specific lines were the voicemail boxes were no longer full. So we did take those steps just to make sure that in the future, we don’t know yet, we’ll see in October for our report what comes out for our annual plan.

Tom Temin 
And as far as you know, the messages that are there in the automated responses are consistent now across all their lines.

Eleina Monroe 
Yes, they are. We did check that, and we verified that they did update those messages.

Tom Temin 
All right. Well, I think that covers it. Eleina Monroe is chief of staff for the Office of inspections and evaluations at the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. Thanks so much for joining me.

Eleina Monroe
Thank you. One more thing we just wanted to let everyone know, taxpayers and their representatives, that we are listening for ideas suggestions. So if anyone has a recommendation for improvement, they can go to tigta.gov/form/suggestions.

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