Collecting Back Taxes: IRS Phone Operations Must Do Better
IMTEC-91-39
Published: Jun 18, 1991. Publicly Released: Jun 27, 1991.
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Highlights
Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) Automated Collection System (ACS), focusing on ACS call sites' effectiveness in calling and providing assistance to persons who owed taxes.
Recommendations
Recommendations for Executive Action
| Agency Affected | Recommendation | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Internal Revenue Service | Because of the potential for increasing the collection of back taxes, the Commissioner of Internal Revenue should implement at all call sites: (1) automation for making outgoing calls and for receiving and directing incoming calls; and (2) standard hours of operation. |
In response to GAO's report, IRS established standard hours of operation at call sites and installed call routing systems at all 23 customer service sites. In March 1996, IRS awarded a contract to pilot a system for making outgoing calls. The system was installed at the Buffalo, New York, customer service site and pilot tested from October 1, 1996 to March 29, 1997. According to IRS, preliminary results show the system is performing as anticipated. A final evaluation report of the pilot, including recommendations for nationwide rollout, is expected by the end of May 1997.
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| Internal Revenue Service | The Commissioner of Internal Revenue should expeditiously establish measurements, such as target overhead rate, to evaluate the performance of call sites. Private collection agencies should be used to help do this, and to look at call site operations and identify specific management, technological, operational, and organizational changes that would improve the collection of back taxes. |
The IRS effort to establish meaningful measurements of ACS productivity and level of service is complete. Baseline measurements to evaluate performance of all sites are now available from U.S. Sprint. Contractor assistance has been obtained to ensure that these ACS features are included in the design of the Integrated Case Processing program. In addition, IRS still plans to conduct additional studies of private sector collection operations as part of its Contracting Out Study.
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Topics
Delinquent taxesFederal taxesFlexible work schedulesGovernment collectionsInformation systemsStaff utilizationTax administrationTax nonpaymentTelephonesTaxes