Even if you want to talk with them, the IRS doesn’t want to talk with you.  That seems to be the finding of a recent Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) report.

Stephen Barr reports that TIGTA placed 36 random calls to the IRS’s 400 walk-in offices, so-called Tax Assistance Centers (TACs), to set up appointments.  Only five (about 14%) resulted in a scheduled meeting.  Of the reminder, four calls were never returned, and of the other 27, IRS staffers would not agree to an appointment.

Although detailed logs apparently are not kept for such phone calls, IRS reports that about one million of the seven million visitors to TACs annually are the result of scheduled appointments.  Interestingly, that tracks neatly with the TIGTA test results, i.e., approximately one in seven (about 14%) visitors had scheduled their meetings ahead of time.

There’s a 14% chance of getting in to talk with an IRSer in person.  What sort of conclusion should taxpayers draw from this?  Does IRS want citizens to contrast that 14% with their chance of being audited when they decide how persistent to be when setting up a meeting?  Of course not, but it makes one wonder why it seems so difficult to arrange a meeting with your friendly IRS employee.

Fred Apelquist, contributing editor

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