22% of IRS Phone Answers Wrong, GAO Says

Taxpayers who use the Internal Revenue Service’s toll-free telephone lines to ask questions about their income tax returns are getting the wrong answer nearly a quarter of the time, Congress was told today.

The General Accounting Office, the non-partisan investigative arm of Congress, said its investigators posed as taxpayers to ask 21 tax law questions during 918 calls to IRS assistance centers across the country between Feb. 17 and March 20.

The investigators got through to an IRS employee 61% of the time on their first call and 87% of the time within five calls.

Of the 793 answers the IRS provided, 63% were correct, 15% were correct but incomplete and 22% were incorrect.

Even if given incorrect answers by the IRS, the taxpayer is responsible for filing correct information on a return.

IRS officials reviewed the questions in the study beforehand to ensure they represented those posed by taxpayers, and they agreed with the answers the GAO investigators considered correct, the report said.

The GAO said its survey, which will continue through the April 15 deadline for filing income tax returns, indicates the IRS is running behind last year in responding to taxpayer questions correctly and in a timely manner.

In a similar survey in 1986, GAO investigators got through to an IRS employee 68% of the time on the first call and 91% of the time within five calls. And the answers provided by the IRS were complete and correct 83% of the time.

Rep. Doug Barnard Jr. (D-Ga.), chairman of the House subcommittee on commerce, consumer and monetary affairs that requested the GAO study, said the changes in the tax law over the last five years, particularly the sweeping revisions enacted last year, may be responsible for the decline in the IRS’ ability to assist taxpayers.

But Barnard said tax compliance will suffer “if large numbers of taxpayers don’t understand their responsibilities under the tax laws and if IRS fails to provide that understanding in an effective manner.”