IRS Cracks Down on Line-Blocking Calls

If you have tried to contact the IRS recently, then you know how difficult it is to speak to an agent on the phone. A majority of callers will hear the dreaded “due to high call volume, your call cannot be completed” automated message. Hang up. Redial. Repeat.

If you are fortunate enough to be placed in the queue, you still face hold times up to 2 hours. At any point you still risk the chance of a “courtesy disconnect”. If this happens, you have to restart the process. Only 1% of calls will make it through the queue to speak to a representative.

Although tax practitioners have access to a separate IRS phone line, we face the same lengthy wait as taxpayers. A few companies took notice of this issue and began offering “line-jumping” services for a monthly fee. These companies use a robo-dialing service to claim a spot in the IRS queue. Then, when a user of their service logs in, they are able to claim one of the spots held by the robo-calls.

Although many tax practitioners are against this idea, others have adopted it, believing it is the only way to contact the IRS. Now, queues are full of these automated placeholder calls, making it even harder for other practitioners to connect with the IRS. While this is a “solution” for those who opt to pay for this service, it undermines the entire process. The IRS has caused its own issues (especially this year) and has failed to automate enough of the process to alleviate the strain on their phone lines.

For some time, the IRS was aware of this robo-call issue, but did nothing to combat it. However, the IRS recently decided to implement a voice verification process, which requires the caller to verify a math problem (or something similar) in order to determine if the caller is human.

The success of the program is currently unclear, as I know certain companies are still offering their line-jumping services. It’s nice to see the IRS address the issue, but if these companies are able to simulate (or avoid) voice verification, which seems to be the case, I don’t know how much additional resources will be spent to add additional layers of verification.

For now, we are stuck with lengthy wait times and many frustrated taxpayers.