IRS Looking to Block Line-Jumping for Phone Calls

By: Nathan J. Richman

The IRS is preparing a pilot program to use artificial intelligence technology to weed out phone-queue-jumping services.

“Just this week, there was an internal announcement — but I’ve been authorized to talk about it externally — [of] a practitioner priority hotline enhancement which is an effort to deal with robocalls into the IRS, and specifically the autodialer programs,” Timothy McCormally of the IRS Office of Professional Responsibility said October 14 at the American Bar Association Section of Taxation meeting.

The IRS plans to use an AI tool to sort out those autodialed calls and prevent line-cutting through technology, McCormally said.

If it works, tax professionals who have their own programs or use services like enQ Inc. may become frustrated, McCormally said.

“That’s going to be rolled out in a pilot sometime soon. But we’re making an effort to deal with the autodialer problem that has caused an awful lot of you to spend a lot more time on hold,” McCormally said.

There is some split in the tax community over the overall effect of enQ. Some defend enQ, instead placing the blame for long hold times on too few IRS employees to answer too many calls, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Others say enQ is making the problem worse, even suggesting the company could be criminally obstructing the IRS’s operations.

An alternative solution — a callback service without the initial call — has been met with a cautious welcome.