WASHINGTON — The IRS is still too slow in processing amended tax returns, answering taxpayer phone calls and resolving identity theft cases, according to an independent watchdog within the agency.
The federal tax collector needs to improve its processing and taxpayer correspondence issues despite a massive boost in funding provided by the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act, according to an annual report Wednesday to Congress from Erin M. Collins, who leads the organization assigned to protect taxpayers’ rights under the Taxpayer Bill of Rights.
The report serves as a reality check of sorts as IRS leaders say the funding boost is producing big improvements in services to taxpayers. GOP critics, meanwhile, are trying try to claw back some of the money and painting the agency as an over-zealous enforcer of the tax code.
Additionally, the backlog of unprocessed amended returns has quadrupled from 500,000 in 2019 to 1.9 million in October last year. And taxpayer correspondence cases have more than doubled over the same period, from 1.9 million to 4.3 million, according to the report.
And while the agency has been on a hiring spree — thousands of workers since 2022 — the new employees are in need of proper training, the report says. The 2023 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey shows that a quarter of IRS employees don’t think they receive adequate training to perform their jobs well.
