IRS still uses tech from JFK era, claims whistleblower revealing the four shameful ways the agency wastes taxpayer money

According to an insider, decades-old computer systems “paid for by the Kennedy administration” and poor management are to blame for the IRS’s poor customer service.

An IRS employee who has worked at the agency for more than a decade spoke exclusively to DailyMail.com about the agency’s shortcomings as it comes under fire for long wait times.

The employee, who has worked in customer service and IT teams, said managers were focused on “vanity projects” instead of implementing changes that would benefit employees and taxpayers.

It comes after a bomb report In June, it emerged that customer service employees were often ‘waiting for the phone to ring’ because there were too few staff.

At the same time, only 31 percent of people who tried to contact the agency actually got through to a human being.

According to a report from the National Taxpayer Advocate, a watchdog for the IRS, customer service representatives spent 1.1 million hours waiting for calls during the seven-week tax filing period this year.

The latest figures show that the IRS has approximately 20,000 customer service representatives.

According to calculations by DailyMail.com, this means that each of them lost an average of 55 hours this year, which equates to just under seven eight-hour working days.

Customer service agents answer phones or process tax returns, but they can’t do both. Even when call volumes are low, agents are stuck on the phone.

But this report only provides a glimpse of what’s really going on at the IRS, the employee claimed.

PULLING OUT STAPLES

The employee alleged that ineffective staffing is leaving taxpayers waiting on the phone for hours to get help.

“There are customer service representatives whose job it is to answer correspondence who spend all day doing nothing but removing staples from papers,” they said.

‘And management just looks the other way.’

DECADES OLD SYSTEMS

“There’s a running joke that some of the oldest systems were paid for by the Kennedy administration,” the employee told DailyMail.com.

“And the truth about the jokes is that I believe they are very accurate.”

Although many computers have been updated, outdated ‘legacy’ systems still pose a problem, they claimed.

‘For about two weeks each year, the systems are completely unavailable because they have to be offline to perform updates.

“There’s no way to update in place. A lot of companies can do that now. Like when Facebook does updates, it doesn’t have to be taken offline for two weeks – it just takes a few minutes.

‘But because we are still using old systems, we do not have those capabilities.’

If the systems are down for weeks, there will be a major customer service problem, they claimed.

“We have to chop this old technology up because we can’t afford to replace it. Otherwise, there’s no good option to replace it.”

The employee alleged that ineffective use of staff means taxpayers are left waiting on the phone for hours to get help.

The IRS lost 55 hours of work per customer service representative this tax season because of its “inefficient” systems, an analysis by DailyMail.com found

The IRS is under fire for long wait times (Photo: IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel)

COMMUNICATION ERROR

According to the insider, outdated systems also prevent account notes from being shared across departments.

“Collection customer service is different than exam or audit customer service. The tools and notes that each department has access to are completely different,” they said.

If someone has been audited, he explained, and they contact another department a year later, the customer service representative has no details about why they were audited the year before.

‘It would be helpful for the customer service representative to have such notes, but the systems are all separate, as are the different groups.

“Everyone is isolated and there’s not a lot of communication between systems. It’s not like we have one system for all tax matters. You have 10 or 15 different systems, and that may be inadequate compared to the number of systems we have.”

This can frustrate taxpayers, they say, because they assume the IRS employee has the notes in front of him detailing any previous communications with the agency.

Instead of prioritizing critical changes, executives focused on vanity projects, such as needlessly promoting Apple Mac computers, they alleged.

“You have executives who prioritize what they see as a big win, but ultimately it just creates a headache and is not sustainable in the long run.”

People worry about losing their jobs if certain processes or functions are automated, they add.

The employee alleged that the notes on the accounts are not shared between departments, which can lead to callers becoming frustrated and abusive.

TOXIC WORKPLACE

According to the insider, there is no clear protocol on how employees should report or handle insults from taxpayers over the phone.

Callers often get frustrated, they say, especially if they expect the customer service representative to be aware of their history and previous conversations with the Tax Authorities, and if they have to wait a long time before they get through to the phone.

“People will curse and yell and scream and threaten us. They will treat you like you’re trash. That’s probably the hardest part,” they said.

“But if you hang up, unfortunately you could be reviewed by Congress. They could call their congressman, who could go look into it.”

Congressional offices can step in and help Americans if they encounter problems with federal agencies, such as the IRS.

But the employee claimed there is no set standard among different managers for what to do when a caller is aggressive.

“Some managers will tell you to accept more criticism, while others will tell you not to accept it.”

Many employees accepted the abuse, they claimed, for fear of losing their jobs if the complaint was pursued further.

DailyMail.com reached out to the IRS for comment. A representative pointed to a news report edition from April.

Several improvements were highlighted that will expand services to millions of taxpayers during the 2024 tax season.

This included improvements in telephone service, more calls answered and faster response times.