Excerpt
SUMMARY: Bad news for taxpayers this year: If you have questions for the Internal Revenue Service, getting through is going to take longer. If you're waiting for a refund, you may face a delay. The IRS attributes this to five years of federal budget cuts, which have led to a hiring freeze and a lack of resources. Judy Woodruff interviews Commissioner John Koskinen about these problems and oversight of the IRS.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): As Tax Day approaches, the Internal Revenue Service has an unusual warnings for taxpayers: Not everyone who calls the IRS help center will be able to reach an agent, which could result in refund delays this year.
The agency blames budget cuts. But critics say the IRS should blame itself.
Judy Woodruff sat down recently for this conversation with the IRS commissioner.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): And we are joined by the man in charge, Commissioner John Koskinen of the Internal Revenue Service.
Welcome to the NewsHour.
JOHN Koskinen, Commissioner, IRS: Thank you.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, let me just start this interview by citing a couple of numbers we have on taxpayers’ experiences with the IRS this year.
We know that, last year, 70 percent of the people who tried to get through with a question were successful. This year, that’s down to fewer than 40 percent. The average wait time for taxpayers trying to get through to the IRS with questions shot up from 10 minutes last year to 24 minutes this year.
What has happened?
JOHN KOSKINEN: The short answer is that Congress cut our budget and we have fewer people available to answer the phone.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Flesh that out for us. How much of a budget cut? What does that mean and how many…
JOHN KOSKINEN: Well, over the last five years, our budget has been cut by $1.2 billion.
In December of this year, the last $350 million of that cut was provided. We only had nine months left in the year, so we had to take difficult choices across the board. One of them was, 70 percent or more of our budget is personnel. So, had to immediately say we wouldn’t hire any new personnel.
We also had to not hire for as long a period of time as many seasonal workers that we bring in during the tax season, because that’s the busiest time of the year. And we didn’t hire our couple thousand temporary employees we normally would hire.
And those are all decisions we knew would have a negative impact on taxpayer services. We had warned the Congress about it, but we had no choice.
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