My Mother Died. Then I Spent 8 Hours on Hold With the IRS

Not long ago, the Internal Revenue Service boasted that taxpayers who called the agency could expect to reach a live agent in three minutes.

That may have been true a few years ago. It is not true now.

In a new report to Congress, the independent National Taxpayer Advocate paints a less flattering picture of the typical taxpayer’s experience in calling the IRS.

The average taxpayer who telephoned the IRS during tax season this year spent 14 minutes on hold, the advocate reports. Across different IRS departments, average hold times ranged as high as 45 minutes.

And here’s a more troubling statistic: Of the 48 million calls placed to the IRS during tax season, customer service agents answered fewer than 10 million – about 21%.

What happened to the other 38 million calls?

Based on my own experience with the IRS this spring, I think I have a pretty good idea.

I filed my dead mother’s final tax return. Then, I waited.

My mother died in November. I asked her accountant to prepare a final tax return. The return showed she was due a refund. We filed, and we waited.

About a month later, I received a letter from the IRS. It asked for some documents, one to prove my mother was dead, a couple more to prove I was her court-appointed representative.

Before I replied, I made the first of many calls to the IRS. I wanted to know if the agency would accept copies of the documents, rather than originals. The letter wasn’t clear.

I called the number listed on the letter, 800-829-0922. An automated attendant told me that, due to high call volume, no one could take my call. It told me to call back later.

That happened a couple more times. So, the next day, I called the main IRS help line, 800-829-1040. I waited on hold for an hour and 54 minutes. At that point, I gave up.

I went ahead and mailed my response to the IRS, enclosing the requested documents.

And I waited.

8 Hours on Hold, and ‘Courtesy Disconnects’

Over the next several weeks, from time to time, I called the IRS. I wanted to know if they had received my documents, and to ask if they needed anything else.

My iPhone log shows 14 calls to different IRS numbers in May and June. Most of the calls lasted a few minutes or less: The auto-attendant told me to call back later, or the hold time was too long to bear.

Once, out of those 14 calls, the auto-attendant offered to have an agent call me back when one became available. The return call never came.

A few times, I was lucky – or unlucky – enough to be placed on hold. My phone log shows the hold times: 63 minutes, 85 minutes, 18 minutes, 125 minutes, 81 minutes. I would wait on hold until I had to make another call, or someone answered.

Three times, I think, I connected with IRS customer service agents. All were polite and responsive. And all gave slightly different advice.

The first agent, I believe, told me my documents hadn’t been processed yet: wait a few weeks and call back. A few weeks later, another agent told me my documents still hadn’t been processed. That agent suggested I gather my documents and call back, whereupon I could send them in again, via fax – yes, the IRS still has fax machines – and have a more meaningful conversation.

A third agent told me not to bother faxing anything. That agent said it could take up to 60 days for my documents to be processed: There was no point calling the IRS until day 61.

And so, again, I wait. I calculated 60 days from the date I mailed my letter, added a week for good measure, and put a reminder on my calendar to call the IRS on the day after that, if I still haven’t heard back.

Now, returning to that report from the National Taxpayer Advocate: I think I have a pretty good idea what happened to the 79% of taxpayer calls that weren’t answered by customer service agents.

Some callers got the information they needed from the auto-attendant. Many more, I bet, ended the calls themselves, because they couldn’t wait on hold, or they lost patience with the auto-attendant, or no one could take their call.

Earlier this year, the Center for Taxpayer Rights tested the IRS telephone system, placing 149 calls to eight different IRS phone lines in March and April.

Many times, those callers encountered “courtesy disconnects”: no one could take their call. Excluding disconnects, the callers encountered average wait times of half an hour or more on five of the eight lines.

Nina Olson, a former national taxpayer advocate, spent 5½ hours on hold with the IRS on a single day when she called each of the 8 lines.

Is There a Right Time to Call the IRS?

I reached out to the current taxpayer advocate to ask for tips I could pass along to other taxpayers who need to call the IRS.

No one could speak to me on the record, but the office referred me to some guidance in its reports and on the IRS website.

Here, then, are some tips for calling the IRS.

Call during tax season. Tax season is busy, but the IRS dispatches extra agents to answer calls in the weeks leading up to April 15. Wait times are generally shorter.

Call later in the week. Wait times are longer on Mondays and Tuesdays.

Call early in the day. The IRS takes calls from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on its main line. “Call as early in the morning as possible,” H&R Block instructs.

Have your accountant make the call. The IRS has a priority line for tax preparers. In the just-finished tax season, tax professionals faced an average hold time of only 8 minutes.