As a government entity, the Internal Revenue Service is in charge of collecting your business and personal income taxes as well as helping you with any questions about forms and procedures. Unfortunately, in the past five years, the IRS budget has fallen by 10 percent, the number of staff has dropped by 8 percent, and the money for training new personnel has decreased by 85 percent. Or so says Nina Olson, a national taxpayer advocate, as detailed in the New York Times.
In the meantime, seven million people have joined the taxpayer list. In addition, the Affordable Care Act and the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act will continue to complicate filings because many of their provisions have gone into effect went into effect no more than one or two years ago. These factors will be responsible for about 47 percent of the IRS help calls not being answered, asserts Olson. Those that do get through will most likely wait over half an hour to converse with a person.
Prepare to do a lot more legwork yourself, primarily through IRS.gov. If the website doesn’t answer your questions, put your call to the IRS on speakerphone, so you can at least do work, read, or otherwise keep busy while you wait for a person on the other end. Be sure to have all the necessary paperwork and information necessary, so you won’t have to call the agency back again.
If all this sounds like too much trouble, contact us to take care of your taxes. Not only do we have years of individual tax expertise, we’ll go through the effort of resolving any questions with the IRS.
