![]()
A new report details the lingering harm of the government’s 35-day shutdown on government services, including those provided by employees at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
After the shutdown ended, IRS customer service representatives were inundated with several million phone calls and forced to keep taxpayers waiting for lengthy periods of time or, in many cases, were unable to respond at all, according to a Sept. 20 report by the Partnership for Public Service.
“For one of the busiest times of the year for the IRS, we had the lowest amount of service on the phones that I’ve seen in my whole career,” said Nina Olson, who retired in July after 18 years as the National Taxpayer Advocate.
According to Olson, the shutdown caused a delay in the hiring and training of customer service representatives, leaving the IRS short more than 2,000 employees needed to answer taxpayer phone calls and respond to questions. As IRS employees returned to work, they faced implementing the new $1.5 trillion tax law, five million unanswered taxpayer letters, 87,000 amended tax returns waiting for review and 16,000 cancelled appointments around the country.
Tens of thousands of IRS employees were called back to work before the shutdown ended but were only able to answer the phones, issue refunds and enter into installment agreements a few days before government officially reopened.
While the IRS was shuttered, the Local Taxpayer Advocate in St. Petersburg, Fla., was the only employee in her office authorized to work. The employee indicated she could do little more than open mail and was unable to communicate with taxpayers until the government reopened.
The IRS has struggled for years with budget cuts that have a direct impact on the ability to serve taxpayers. Once the shutdown ended, National President Tony Reardon submitted testimony to a House subcommittee underscoring the connection between increases in targeted IRS funding and improvements in IRS customer service.
After the IRS got a funding boost to improve telephone customer service in 2016 and 2017, the agency hired additional personnel, reducing taxpayer wait times. The results were staggering: The IRS raised the phone level of service from 38 percent during the 2015 filing season to 79 percent during the 2017 filing season. For fiscal year 2020, the union supports the House version of funding legislation that would provide $12 billion for the IRS and help the agency improve taxpayer services by hiring much-needed personnel.