Tax Administration

How Precise Are IRS Estimates of Taxpayers Calling for Assistance? Gao ID: GGD-89-31 February 21, 1989

In response to congressional and administrative concerns over the amount of resources devoted to the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) Taxpayer Service Program, GAO reviewed the IRS approach for estimating demand for telephone assistance and for determining the level of telephone service provided to taxpayers.

GAO found that IRS used telephone demand estimates to: (1) develop budgetary projections; (2) determine the level of service provided to taxpayers; and (3) manage and operate its telephone sites. GAO also found that: (1) IRS defined its telephone demand as the estimated number of persons calling for assistance; (2) although IRS reasonably assumed that a portion of unanswered calls were redial attempts and were related to system congestion, GAO could not verify the accuracy of IRS demand estimates; (3) IRS calculated its level of service by dividing the number of calls answered by the estimated number of callers; (4) other telecommunications organizations based their level of service on total call volume, but that method overstated the number of individual callers due to the large number of busy signals and redial attempts; and (5) because of demand estimate uncertainties and because the estimates are the primary basis for developing budget requests, IRS needs to provide Congress with more complete service information.

Recommendations

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