Skip to main content

You are here

Advertisement

IRS 2016 Data Book Shows Effect of Ending Email Help

The IRS has released its fiscal year (FY) 2016 Data Book, a compilation of data about IRS activities and functions. The data, which covers the period Oct. 1, 2015-Sept. 30, 2016, includes information about returns filed, taxes collected, enforcement, taxpayer assistance, the IRS budget and workforce. And it shows the effects of the termination of the IRS providing assistance by email.

The data book contains charts that show trends such as increases in use of the IRS website and higher telephone service since FY 2015.

There were more than half a billion unique visits to IRS.gov during FY 2016. As for telephone service, during FY 2016 the number of questions the IRS answered over the telephone through live assistance and automated services increased by 11.4% from FY 2015. Live phone assistance increased by much more, 40%.

Telephone Assistance
2015: 61,340,034 calls
2016: 68,311,901 calls

Live Telephone Assistance
2015: 18,236,785 calls
2016: 25,544,594 calls

These results should come as no surprise. Effective Oct. 1, 2015 the IRS Employee Plans Office stopped answering technical questions by email, and also stopped accepting forwarded messages from IRS Customer Account Services that had been sent to its personnel by email. The IRS made these changes because it said that the Employee Plans Office no longer had the resources to do research and also provide answers for legal topics.

In announcing those changes, the IRS suggested that those who need answers to retirement plan questions go to the Retirement Plans and Retirement Plan Forms and Publications portions of its website. It also had said that taxpayers may call the IRS customer services personnel for assistance concerning account-specific questions, basic information about EP forms and status of pending applications.