TIGTA REPORT

[Lee B]

  https://www.journalofaccountancy.com/news/2022/may/staffing-shortages-backlog-hampered-irs-2022-filing-season-tigta-says.html

Excerpts:

"TIGTA's findings suggested that gains the IRS made in expanding its workforce as planned came too little or too late to significantly affect filing season operations. For example, as of March 15, 2022, the IRS had added 521 new employees to its Submission Processing unit, which was only 9.5% of its hiring goal of 5,473, TIGTA reported. Hiring was more successful in its Accounts Management function, meeting 76.5% of its goal of 5,000 more staff members."

 

"The number of assistor toll-free incoming calls answered during 2022 (as of March 4) was far fewer in 2022, falling to 2,688,000 from 4,444,000 in 2021 (as of March 5), with the level of service, or percentage answered, falling to 19.5% in 2022 from 27.3% in 2021. And the average speed of answering those calls increased, to 24 minutes in 2022 from 18 minutes in 2021."

 

"Taxpayer correspondence remained an Achilles' heel, as well. As of March 19, 2022, Accounts Management's inventory included 7.6 million cases — a relatively minor net difference from the 8 million cases the function held at the end of 2021. Overaged cases within that inventory has remained an ongoing challenge, TIGTA reported. The IRS "has not taken any significant actions to address the continued lack of quality customer service it offers taxpayers corresponding with the IRS," despite TIGTA's earlier recommendations that it said could improve account service."

 

"Paper-filed and amended returns also contribute to the problem, both only slightly smaller components of unprocessed returns on the week ending March 12, 2022, compared with the week ending Dec. 31, 2021. Original returns on paper fell slightly, to nearly 4.5 million, from the 4.7 million returns at the end of 2021, while amended returns awaiting work were down to 2.24 million from 2.38 million. One potential reason is both categories of unprocessed returns at the end of 2021 were higher than at the end of 2020 and an order of magnitude greater than at the end of 2019. By comparison, original paper returns awaiting processing at the end of 2019 numbered only 183,000, and amended returns 110,443."