This was from another tax preparer regarding their experience with the IRS. “I am going to kill myself, and then after that, send the IRS a nasty letter. After being on hold for 105 minutes (yes an hour and 45 minutes, I finally got through to a person in the Business and Specialty Tax section. After hearing my concern, he went to ‘research the issue (I will be back in 5 to seven minutes)”. Within 2 minutes I was disconnected. Please somebody, just, shoot me.”
Technically, a preparer’s job ends with acceptance of the return. After that, it is completely out of our hands. In fact, we’ll often need paperwork to even talk to the IRS on behalf of a client. That said, clients look to us and we want to help our clients. None of that matters when there are no people at the IRS to take the call.
Personally, I’ve been hung up on probably a dozen times or more after waits over half an hour. The line clicks, you think someone is picking up, then you’re disconnected. We deserve better. Taxpayers deserve better. A key need right now is to get more IRS employees and to get the backlog cleaned up. I still have a couple of people with 2019 returns that haven’t yet been processed and there doesn’t seem to be a thing that can be done about it.
