IRS ‘fully committed’ to better customer service as agency hires 4,000 new workers

The IRS said it has passed a milestone of hiring 4,000 caller lawsuit work workers arsenic the bureau prepares for the 2023 taxation filing season.

Hired implicit the past respective months, these workers person been trained to assistance taxpayers, including telephone support, which has struggled with precocious telephone volumes during the pandemic.

"The IRS is afloat committed to providing the champion work possible, and we are moving rapidly to usage caller backing to assistance taxpayers during the engaged taxation season," said IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig.

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"As the recently hired employees are trained and determination online successful 2023, we volition person much assistors connected the telephone than immoderate clip successful caller history," Rettig said.

The IRS plans to prosecute different 1,000 lawsuit work workers by the extremity of the year. Almost each grooming volition beryllium implicit by Presidents Day 2023, erstwhile the highest telephone volumes typically occur, according to the agency.

However, telephone hold times stay precocious successful the meantime, and the IRS encourages taxpayers to sojourn IRS.gov for answers to questions. "IRS employees look guardant to providing amended work successful the adjacent future," Rettig added.

Enacted successful August, the Inflation Reduction Act allocated astir $80 cardinal to the agency implicit the adjacent 10 years, with funds earmarked for enforcement, operations, payer services, technology, improvement of a direct escaped e-file system and more.

As of October 14, 2022, the bureau had 5.1 cardinal unprocessed idiosyncratic taxation returns received successful 2022, including late-filed returns from erstwhile years, according to the IRS.

Rettig successful March told the House Ways and Means Committee that helium expects the backlog volition "absolutely" resolve earlier December.