IRS Hires 4,000 New Customer Service Staff, to Hire 1,000 More by End of Year

IRS moves to prepare for 2023 tax season

The Internal Revenue Service building in Washington, on Jan. 28, 2019. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced Friday it has 4,000 customer service representatives as part of efforts to prepare for the 2023 tax filing season.

The 4,000 new hires, which the federal agency dubs a “milestone,” were recruited over the last several months and “are being trained to provide help to taxpayers, including answering phone questions,” it said on its website.

“This is part of a much wider IRS improvement effort tied to the Inflation Reduction Act funding approved in August,” it said of the hiring, crediting it to the $80 billion provision to the IRS over the next 10 years under the spending package.

IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig said that the revenue service is “moving quickly to use new funding to help taxpayers during the busy tax season.”

“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,” he said. “But help is on the way for taxpayers. As the newly hired employees are trained and move online in 2023, we will have more assisters on the phone than any time in recent history.”

Rettig previously said in April this year that the service was only answering up to 20 percent of phone calls. At the time, he also said the IRS expects to increase phone service to around 70 percent of calls answered during the 2022 fiscal year. He defined this rate as “normal.”

The IRS said on Friday it expects phones to be “answered at a much higher level during the 2023 filing season.

Seeking 1,000 More Hires

The new customer service representatives, upon joining the IRS, undergo weeks of training to “improve the taxpayer experience,” according to the announcement. “The training will cover a wide range of issues including technical account management issues and understanding and respecting taxpayer rights.”

The IRS is also seeking to add 1,000 more customer service representatives by the end of 2022, which would bring the total number of new hires in this area to 5,000.

“IRS improvements and use of the new direct hire authority have speeded the hiring process. This year, these positions have been brought on since August; last year, it took approximately eight months to hire customer service representatives,” the revenue service stated.

The IRS is also working to hire more people beyond the taxpayer service roles, including in information technology and compliance positions.

Rettig said that more positions overall “will be open across the country in coming weeks and months, and we encourage potential candidates to visit USAjobs.gov to look for opportunities.”