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GAO Report of Refunds and Customer Service

Posted on Jan. 12, 2023

No one reading this blog and probably very few people in the general populace need to be told that the IRS has experienced significant problems recently processing returns, answering calls and filling vacancies.

While IRS is still digging out, this past November the NTA posted an update on the IRS’s progress working through its backlog, noting that IRS was making progress but that for many taxpayers the delays due to the backlog could make them feel like Groundhog Day

GAO, like TAS, provides a gold mine of data helping understand the scope and status of the IRS’s challenges.  This post pulls charts from the recent GAO report entitled “2022 Tax Filing – Backlogs and Ongoing Hiring Challenges Led to Poor Customer Service and Refund Delays.”

The report describes it purpose as follows:

You asked us to assess IRS’s performance during the 2022 filing season. In this report, we assess IRS’s 2022 filing season performance on (1) processing tax returns, (2) providing customer service to taxpayers, and (3) hiring staff to support filing season operations.

In this post we pull out the graphics from the GAO report in order to give you a visual taste of the findings.  Read the report if you want the details behind the problems.

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