Home Media Center News Releases

Washington, D.C.—The leader of the union representing thousands of Internal Revenue Service employees today reacted angrily to an IRS pronouncement it plans to cut back by approximately 20 percent the hours taxpayers can reach IRS telephone assistors—despite clear directions from Congress to make its 1-800 help line service a priority by increasing phone lines and staff.

The IRS plan to reduce by 15 hours a week the availability of telephone help is “an absolute outrage,” said President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU). To add insult to injury, she said, the IRS said it plans to make the nationwide change on Jan. 23, 2006—the week the peak season starts for telephone tax help from the IRS.

“It’s just unbelievable,” Kelley said, “not only that the IRS would think so little of its obligation to provide taxpayers with the help they need when they need it most—during the tax-filing season—but that this agency would so blatantly disregard a congressional mandate.”

The congressional intent on this issue is clearly expressed, the NTEU leader said, in the House-Senate conference report on the fiscal 2006 Transportation-Treasury Appropriations bill. In part, it says: “The commissioner (of the IRS) shall continue to make the improvement of the Internal Revenue

Service 1-800 helps line service a priority and allocate resources necessary to increase phone lines and staff to improve the (IRS) 1-800 help line service.”

The conference report also contains language preventing Taxpayer Assistance Center (TAC) closings and other customer service cutbacks until the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) has studied those possible moves and reported to Congress on their impact. Taxpayer services cannot be reduced or terminated until 60 days after the study is submitted and IRS is required to consult with stakeholders before any changes are made.

The planned cutbacks in telephone tax help are part of an IRS effort to reduce the amount of personal assistance available to taxpayers as it seeks to force more and more people to its Internet web site for the help they need.

“That is clearly a counter-productive move,” President Kelley said. “Voluntary taxpayer compliance is tied directly to the amount of assistance taxpayers can receive from the agency—and the ease with which they can get that help. I don’t see why the IRS continues to ignore this obvious fact,” even as the gap between taxes owed and taxes paid continues to climb, she added.

Earlier this year, the IRS said it would close 68 of its TACs across the country. That move, which would have adversely impacted large numbers of people, including lower-income taxpayers, those without access to the Internet and those for whom English is not their native language, generated a wave of protest led by NTEU members and chapters nationally.

In the face of the protests and the language contained in the Treasury appropriations bill, the IRS suspended the plan.

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 employees in 30 agencies and departments, including some 94,000 in the IRS.