A View from the Inside: Quality Service

April 24, 2015


This is the third in a series of articles where I discuss viewpoints shaped from my time with IRS.  Today we will be reviewing the newer version of the Taxpayer Bill of Rights.

Each and every taxpayer has a set of fundamental rights they should be aware of when dealing with the IRS. The IRS website states, “Explore your rights and our obligations to protect them”.  So let’s take a tour and grade IRS in the old fashion grade of my ancient school days, “A-F”. This may take two to three columns to clear the air as many of these rights are currently being violated.

The Right to Quality Service

Taxpayers have the right to receive prompt, courteous, and professional assistance in their dealings with the IRS, to be spoken to in a way they can easily understand, to receive clear and easily understandable communications from the IRS, and to speak to a supervisor about inadequate service.

We touched a bit on Quality Service last week and will explore it more in-depth today. Before I even get into the issue, the Grade is F.

Maybe years ago, IRS had Quality Service. I like to think I provided quality service as a telephone assistor. But, I am also aware that Quality Service is a moving target and can be different to everyone.

Some individuals want you to take charge and solve their problem from start to finish, and that is not always possible. Some want you to do this service for free and on top of that they want the issue solved in minutes rather than days. Others hide their head in the sand and think that IRS will eventually figure it out and correct the issue, which is NOT GOING TO HAPPEN in most cases.  With the IRS, a human touch is absolutely necessary in almost all cases. The computer that spits out the notices and letters cannot automatically fix anything. It requires a human touch that first must:

  • Understand the tax law
  • Be authorized to take necessary action to correct the issue
  • Be willing to follow through until the issue is resolved

Meeting this standard will be hard even for the most devoted employee. Understanding the law required a certain amount of self-training and a want to learn more about a particular issue. Being able to fix something is another issue entirely. IRS has limits on what can be done, when it can be done, and who can do it. I fully understand these limits, but they do not always work with the interest of the taxpayer in mind. Following through depends entirely on the previous two issues, if you are limited in the follow through or do not understand the technical aspects of the issue, Quality Service will never be delivered.

My purpose in life the last few years has been to assist the tax professional community with the problems they face when dealing with the IRS. This assistance has taken many forms, from attempting to get cases accepted by the Taxpayer Advocate to trying to get an issue resolved that really has no set procedure. In other words, trying an approach and if it doesn’t work, well, we will figure something else out. The IRS has the Internal Revenue Manual, but not all issues have a specific procedure to fix an issue. Along the way, My Practitioners (as I call them) have hopefully learned some things. But just when you think you have heard it all, IRS has a way to keep the job interesting.

Not every issue has an easy path to resolution and quality service requires COMMUNICATION.

Just yesterday I was on a conference call with an IRS analyst to learn more about an audit issue we are seeing.  Our purpose for arranging the conference call was to make sure we were providing the correct message and how we could help the IRS by getting the word out on issues they are seeing. We wanted to generically provide an example of a “DO NOT DO THIS” scenario.  CALT’s article had been updated and we had received many questions on the issue from all over the United States. We felt it was an opportunity to get good messages out this summer at our seminars in New York, South Dakota and Lake Tahoe.  The call lasted less than five minutes and the feedback we received was the “article was balanced”.  I would be the first one to understand that IRS disclosure rules prevent them from talking about cases, no problem there. I also expected more of the analyst. Instead it took about 6-7 e-mails to arrange a call that lasted less than five minutes. And to make it even more bazarre to my director, an IRS Public Affairs Specialist was there to make sure the IRS analyst did not overstep the information IRS stated she could provide. This amounted to nothing, and the communication failed miserably.

Quality Service requires COMMITMENT, at a national level as well as a personal employee level.  What is the first thing IRS cuts when there are budget issues?  Customer Service. Customer service is the most important entity in a business. Without customer service your customer will no longer do business with the business.  IRS doesn’t need to worry about that aspect as they do not care about you because they have the authority to audit you, levy your bank account, issue a summons and send you all sorts of letters and notices to confuse you. In their eyes, they have a “captive audience”. 

Quality service requires PROMPT, COURTEOUS AND PROFESSIONAL assistance.

Quality service requires UNDERSTANDABLE COMMUNICATIONS. 

Quality service requires EMPLOYEES WHO ARE COMMITTED to help solve problems.  I know IRS has these people. I use to work with many of them daily, BUT these people are disappearing as they retire.  The knowledge and talent is walking out the door and there are few that can replace them in the short term , as knowledge comes from understanding how IRS works, watching your limitations, and (as I discovered) figuring how hard you could push to get the job done. 

Congress has some responsibility for the state of crisis the IRS now faces.  I understand what has happen the last few years and we all know IRS made poor decisions and has lost public trust. I could probably write a book on the good and bad things that I have assisted with over the years but that is not what this is about. This is about taking a look at “Service” and defining what that means.  Service cannot be measured.  Up until the day of my retirement, I still thought education and service had value regardless of whether I could count how many people I helped or not.  It has value, it has meaning. It is what keeps the world of business in business. Service should be #1 on everyone’s list; but for IRS it is at the bottom.   Totally failing in this regard, the Internal Revenue Service, needs to change its name. Service is not a part of anything it provides and the sad part of this whole issue is that it could be.                

keywords: taxpayer bill of rights, taxpayer advocate, internal revenue service 
 

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