The IRS's phone service in 2021 was 'the worst it has ever been,' watchdog says

IRS building.
(Image credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The Internal Revenue Service is "in crisis," a new government watchdog report alleges, and American taxpayers are paying the ever-frustrating price.

And thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, years of budget cuts, a declining workforce, and a slew of new responsibilities, the IRS even managed to make 2021 "the most challenging year ever for taxpayers," said the National Taxpayer Advocate in the report, pieces of which were highlighted by The Washington Post.

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In addition to a spike in frustration-led web traffic and a deep backlog of returns, the watchdog found that the IRS "response rate to taxpayer phone calls plummeted to 11 percent" last year, writes the Post, down from 29 percent the year before the pandemic. What's more, an increasing number of calls and a strained workforce combined to make the IRS's phone service in 2021 "the worst it has ever been," the report found. Notably, the agency received 282 million calls in 2021, versus 100 million in 2019.

Investigate more of the watchdog's findings at The Washington Post.

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Brigid Kennedy

Brigid Kennedy worked at The Week from 2021 to 2023 as a staff writer, junior editor and then story editor, with an interest in U.S. politics, the economy and the music industry.