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Washington, D.C.—With tax documents now in hand, millions of frustrated callers eager to file their returns with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) will face jammed phone lines and long hold times during the President’s Day holiday, the head of the largest independent federal-employee union said today.

The agency’s struggle to provide the best telephone customer service it can will also highlight the need for Congress to provide the IRS with the resources to serve the taxpaying public in a satisfactory manner, according to Colleen M. Kelley, national president of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU).

The week of the Presidents Day holiday is one of the busiest for the IRS in terms of call volume as millions of taxpayers dial in seeking answers to tax questions and help to file their returns accurately and on time. The IRS estimates it will be able to answer only 43 percent of taxpayer calls this year due to repeated budget cut and chronic staff shortages.

“Unfortunately, during this holiday weekend, taxpayers will be experiencing firsthand the results of underfunding the IRS,” Kelley said.

NTEU has been pressing for Congress to boost funding for the IRS but the agency has faced five consecutive years of budget cuts.

“Taxpayers must brace for long hold times—that is, if they can even get through to the IRS—but they will not be the only ones who are frustrated,” the NTEU leader said. “IRS employees get frustrated, too, because they can no longer provide the level of customer service they could in the past.”

Congress has cut the IRS budget by a total of $1.2 billion since 2010. Between 2010 and the end of the current fiscal year, the IRS will lose as many as 17,000 workers. Full-time employees assigned to answer telephone calls from taxpayers fell from 9,300 in 2009 to 6,900 in 2014—a 26 percent drop, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Meanwhile, the number of taxpayers keeps growing as 7 million new filers are added between 2010 and the end of the current fiscal year. Call volume is also on the rise; the IRS gets about 100 million calls a year.

“Cutting the IRS budget does much more than hurt IRS employees, it hurts all taxpayers. I urge members of Congress to recognize the practical effect of chronic budget cuts. Starving an agency that collects 93 percent of the nation’s revenue was never a wise strategy—and the coming holiday week will provide fresh evidence to back that up,” the NTEU leader said.

Poor telephone assistance will hardly be the only problem for the IRS this year.

Waits at walk-in centers will stretch for hours and some centers will be forced to turn taxpayers away. That will affect especially elderly, low-income and non-English-speaking taxpayers who cannot access the Internet at a time the IRS is directing more and more filers to the agency’s web site to find answers to tax questions.

Correspondence will pile up and taxpayers will wait longer and longer for a response. Refunds will be delayed, especially for taxpayers who file paper returns or for taxpayers with errors or questions on their returns. Tax cheats will have an easier time evading what they owe; between 2010 and 2014, the IRS lost 5,000 enforcement personnel and that number is expected to drop by another 1,800 this year.

NTEU represents 150,000 employees in 31 agencies and departments.