‘We Had A Great Filing Season, But It Wasn’t Perfect’: Ashley Hinson & IRS Head Discuss Workforce

6 months ago

During a House Appropriations Committee hearing on Tuesday, Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-IA) questioned Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Danny Werfel about the workforce.

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Transcript

00:00 Thank You Mr. Bishop. Recognize Mrs. Hinson now for any questions you may have.

00:04 Thank You Mr. Chairman. Thank You Commissioner for being before us today

00:08 to discuss your budget request. As I'm sure you'd agree based on your

00:12 testimony, federal agencies including the IRS are in the business of customer

00:15 service which is crucial that our taxpayers get that high level of support.

00:19 It should be the top priority and as you mentioned millions of Americans are

00:23 interacting with you through the annual filing season so it is critical that

00:27 they are able to receive those timely responses and get the feedback and

00:31 returns that are rightfully owed to them. As I say to Iowans, it's their money not

00:34 the government's money, right? So throughout the past filing season my

00:38 team has been hearing from constituents who are concerned they cannot go to

00:42 their local IRS office in person to pick up their tax forms or filing

00:45 instructions and I think a lot of that is due to in-person work challenges and

00:50 you noted in a House Ways and Means hearing earlier this year, roughly 50% of

00:55 IRS personnel are in the office at any given time. So do you believe that this

00:59 is still the case that it's about half and how are you tracking how many

01:04 employees are currently in their offices to do those services like you mentioned

01:08 pop-up offices as well? Yeah so there's tens of thousands of IRS employees that

01:15 that are always on-site and these are people that are for example

01:20 managing the paper that's coming in and doing submission processing but it's

01:24 also our employees in our walk-in centers. There is no remote work in any

01:29 of our walk-in centers around the country. We have since the start of the

01:34 Inflation Reduction Act reopened or opened more than 50 walk-in centers

01:39 around the country. They're virtually being staffed every day.

01:42 They're only staffed every day. Here's the challenge that we see. We move to an

01:48 appointment schedule during the week and we have more taxpayers

01:54 coming than we can handle in a lot of cases because everyone else has an

01:59 appointment. So we started opening Saturday hours and that's not by

02:03 appointment and a given walk-in center can serve about 300

02:07 people a day on a Saturday without appointment but sometimes four or five

02:12 hundred people show up and this is why it's so important that we continue to

02:16 make sure that we're right sizing our footprint to meet the demand. So if we

02:21 can serve 300 people in a city center in Iowa and 500 people are

02:27 showing up that tells me there's more people that are needed and we need to

02:32 improve our digital solutions as well. But in the walk-in centers those are

02:37 no one works from home and they are fully staffed right now. Well I would

02:42 just urge you to continue to keep an eye on that because if that demand exists we

02:46 need to be responsive to that number one because I look at I get a district

02:50 report every single week from my casework team and it's it's never less

02:54 than two to one in terms of agency interactions. IRS is number one that our

02:58 casework team has to deal with. So when I look at reports out from GAO, 61% of IRS

03:04 responses to mail to taxpayer inquiries were considered late. I'd like to see

03:08 that number improve that's up from 55% in the previous filing season. So I guess

03:13 what are you doing on the staff front when you mentioned these tens of

03:16 thousands of employees that are in the office what are you doing to speed up

03:19 that correspondence and make sure that's timely? Yeah so if you look at our filing

03:22 season I look at it as a balance scorecard. There were places where we

03:27 exceeded our goals and did terrific for example our 1-800-1040 line we exceeded

03:33 almost all of our goals but there are other parts of the IRS operations where

03:38 we were below goal and we have more work to do. One of them I mentioned earlier is

03:42 our response to those that have been victimized by identity theft. The line is

03:46 too long people are waiting too long to get their issues resolved and there are

03:50 certain correspondences or activities that are not going in the right

03:55 direction in terms of timeliness. So what we'll do and what we're doing now that

03:59 filing season is done is we're looking at that balance scorecard and I'm

04:03 requiring the team to incrementally improve all the metrics where we fell

04:08 behind. So I'm always going to be transparent like we had a great filing

04:12 season but it wasn't perfect and when it's not perfect that is impacting a

04:16 taxpayer. That means a taxpayer couldn't get through or got something late and

04:20 that matters to us. I don't know that we can ever be perfect that that would be

04:24 unrealistic but we're gonna continue to perfect our process and not rest. I like

04:30 to say there's no victory laps here. We had a good filing season a strong

04:34 filing so we need to build on it we also have to close gaps. No I certainly

04:37 understand that and closing gaps you know you mentioned your phone wait times

04:41 are down significantly but we're still hearing reports from people who are

04:44 waiting for 45 minutes and so if you're calculating that average by including

04:48 people who hang up of course that number is going to be low. I can explain that

04:51 actually. 45 minutes is way too long to wait. Agreed and I can explain that which

04:55 is our main line our 1040 line almost 90% of every call the IRS gets comes

05:02 through that phone line so we really focused on that. That is the line that

05:05 has a three minute wait. That is a line that we had the best level of service

05:09 we've ever had this year in terms of us successfully answering those calls and

05:13 those questions. The remaining 10% is are the other are the other call lines that

05:19 we have we have to do better. When you if you hear someone that had a 45 minute

05:24 wait guaranteed that is in one of those other call lines in the remaining 10% we

05:30 got to close those gaps. Absolutely well I look forward to following up with you

05:32 on that thank you very much Commissioner I yield back. Thank you.

‘We Had A Great Filing Season, But It Wasn’t Perfect’: Ashley Hinson & IRS Head Discuss Workforce

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