The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has announced new improvements including hiring thousands of extra workers to help with the 2023 tax season.
The IRS says the move is part of a wider improvement effort for the agency as part of the Inflation Reduction Act funding approved in August.
IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig, said, "The IRS is fully committed to providing the best service possible, and we are moving quickly to use new funding to help taxpayers during the busy tax season."
4,000 new workers have been hired and are being trained to help taxpayers, which will include the IRS's effort to answer taxpayer phone calls with questions about filing.
"Our phone lines have been simply overwhelmed during the pandemic, and we have been unable to provide the help that IRS employees want to give and that the nation's taxpayers deserve. But help is on the way for taxpayers. As the newly hired employees are trained and move online in 2023, we will have more assistors on the phone than any time in recent history," said Rettig.
"Even though we have new hires in the pipeline, our phone lines remain extremely busy," said Rettig.
"We continue to urge people to first visit IRS.gov for information related to their tax questions. Many of the questions we receive can be answered online, providing faster answers for people than calling. We appreciate taxpayer's continued patience with us. Please know that we have dedicated employees across the IRS working hard every day to help people on the phone and in-person. IRS employees look forward to providing better service in the near future," he said.
The IRS hopes to add an additional 1,000 customer service agents by the end of the year, making the total new hires in the department hit 5,000.