received more than 26 million telephone calls and 316,000 visits to its walk-in sites
relating solely to stimulus payments.
24
Even with supplemental funding, there was not enough time for the IRS to hire, train, and
deploy additional employees to answer the phones or staff the walk-in sites. The IRS
therefore faced some difficult decisions. On the one hand, if it did not reassign employees
from other functions to assist in answering the large spike in telephone calls, the LOS on
the toll-free telephone lines would have declined by even more than it has. On the other
hand, if the IRS did reassign employees from other functions, the core work those
employees ordinarily perform would suffer. Inevitably, there was both a decline in the
level of taxpayer service the IRS provides, particularly on its toll-free telephone lines, and
a modest reduction in its enforcement activities.
A. The IRS Has Been Unable to Keep Up with the Large Volume of
Telephone Calls and Correspondence It Has Received.
The IRS has received 94.4 million enterprise-wide “net call attempts” YTD (through
June 7, 2008) as compared with 51.6 million “net call attempts” for the same period
in 2007.
25
That reflects an enormous 83 percent increase. In percentage terms, the largest
increases have occurred since the regular April 15 filing deadline. In the week ending
June 7, for example, the IRS received 6.2 million call attempts compared with 1.6 million
call attempts during the comparable week in 2007 – an increase of 279 percent.
26
Despite the reassignment of employees from other functions and despite the IRS’s decision
to extend the employment of temporary staff hired for the filing season, the IRS has been
unable to keep up with the volume of calls. The enterprise-wide level of service (LOS)
in 2008 stands at 62.8 percent YTD (through June 7) as compared with 80.6 percent
in 2007 for the comparable period.
27
In the week ending June 7, the LOS stood at 42.9
24
Internal Revenue Service, Joint Operations Center, Snapshot Reports: Product Line Detail: Rebate Hotline
(Economic Stimulus Payments) 866-234-2942 (week ending June 7, 2008); IRS Economic Stimulus Activity
Report (June 17, 2008).
25
Internal Revenue Service, Joint Operations Center, Snapshot Reports: Enterprise Snapshot (week ending
June 7, 2008). As noted in a prior footnote, the term “net call attempts” reflects official data that the IRS
posts on its Joint Operations Center website to track the activity on its toll-free lines, but it is a term of art
that generally understates the number of calls that taxpayers place in an attempt to reach the IRS. The IRS
separately tracks “dialed number attempts,” a measure that reflects the number of times taxpayers have dialed
the toll-free number and provides a more accurate measurement of what taxpayers experience. The IRS
reports that it has received 135 million dialed number attempts in 2008 YTD (through June 7). IRS Response
to TAS Information Request (June 16, 2008). On May 9, the peak day so far this year, the IRS received 4.7
million dialed number attempts.
26
Internal Revenue Service, Joint Operations Center, Snapshot Reports: Enterprise Snapshot (week ending
June 7, 2008).
27
Id. The customer service representative (CSR) LOS measures the relative success rate of taxpayers that
call for toll-free services seeking assistance from CSRs. Generally speaking, the CSR LOS is calculated by
dividing the number of calls answered by CSRs by the total call attempts of callers attempting to reach the
CSR queue. (Essentially, CSR LOS measures the percentage of customers who want to reach a CSR and who
are successful.) Total call attempts is the sum of calls answered, calls abandoned by the caller, and calls that
receive a busy signal. For more detail, see CAS Data Dictionary - FY 2008, at
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