Limited Testing Shows Taxpayers Generally Received Courteous and Professional IRS Telephone Service

Report Information

Summary

We selected 5 IRS telephone applications and listened to 831 call recordings to assess the quality of service provided to taxpayers when calling the IRS. In April and May 2024, the IRS received approximately 2.3 million telephone calls on these 5 telephone applications from taxpayers seeking assistance. In the majority of the telephone calls, the IRS representatives were courteous and professional while assisting the taxpayer. However, we identified some instances where improvements are needed. Of the 831 call recordings in our sample, we identified 90 instances (11 percent) of unprofessional behavior of IRS representatives:

• 51 taxpayers were not provided courteous service.
• 24 taxpayers experienced long wait times while on hold.
• 15 taxpayers experienced potentially disruptive background noise. In addition, we identified 128 (15 percent) of the 831 telephone calls were either dropped or disconnected. For these calls, we could not determine the cause of the issues. IRS management indicated that they do not have a systemic process to track the reason for dropped telephone calls. Instead, reporting dropped calls is typically employee driven. Data collected are only used internally to identify trends that require management action.