They’ve Answered the Call: The IRS Puts Up Respectable Stats for the 2017 Filing Season
With basketball playoffs in full swing, fans are packing sports arenas to cheer and weep as their favorite players rack up incredible stats…take, for example, Lebron James hitting his 17th playoff triple-double or Russell Westbrook recording 3 straight playoff triple-doubles.
Meanwhile, in the hushed halls of a stoic building at 1111 Constitution Ave in Washington, D.C., keyboards were a-clacking and mice were a-clicking as the Internal Revenue Service rounded off a tax season filled with equally impressive stats.
The IRS’s customer service game was on-point in the 2017 filing season – at least in comparison with past years plagued by clogged call lines and unresponsiveness. Back in March, the IRS’s John Dalrymple swore that things were looking brighter, and he was right: the agency managed a 75% telephone response rate for this full filing season. Now that’s a pretty good rebound, considering that the 2015 percentage was 37 percent – that’s right, 37 percent – and it puts the level of service slightly above last year’s stats.
What’s been behind the boost? Well, just like athletes who need adequate support and resources to train and succeed in the big game, the IRS needs to have enough money to get the job done. The agency received an additional $290 million for the fiscal year ending on Oct. 31, 2016. With a continuing budget resolution in operation this year, the IRS still has access to the additional appropriation, with the bottom line being better customer service.
On the defensive end, the IRS put out even more impressive numbers. According to an interim 2017 filing season report released by TIGTA, as of March 4 the IRS had stopped a whopping 95 percent of fake tax refunds, preventing $961 million from getting dished out illegally. The IRS had also spotted and confirmed 14,068 fraudulent tax returns involving identity theft as of March 2.
Taxpayers are lucky the agency has its guard up, considering the slew of identity theft tax refund schemes lurking around, including the recent W-2 scam that targeted unsuspecting HR personnel. It will be interesting to review TIGTA’s analysis of the IRS’s record for the complete season, which will be released in September of this year.
In the meantime, even though there weren’t any literal slam dunks, half-court swishes, or breakaway layups during the 2017 tax filing season, let’s give the IRS a small cheer for its respectable performance on the court this time around. After all, how well the IRS is working directly reflects on the taxpayer filing experience.
Wang Solutions 
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