Decades-old computer systems “paid for by the Kennedy administration” and terrible management are the reasons for the IRS’s poor customer service, an insider claims.

An IRS employee who has worked at the agency for more than a decade spoke exclusively to DailyMail.com about its failings, which have come under criticism for long wait times on calls.

The employee, who worked in customer service and IT teams, said managers were pursuing “prestige projects” rather than making changes that would benefit workers and taxpayers.

This follows a high-profile report in June that revealed that customer service agents often have to “sit around and wait for the phone to ring” due to inefficient use of staff.

At the same time, only 31 percent of those who tried to contact the agency actually managed to speak to a human being.

Decades-old computer systems “paid for by the Kennedy administration” and poor management are the reasons for poor customer service at the IRS, claims an insider.

According to a report by the National Taxpayer Advocate, an IRS oversight agency, customer service representatives waited 1.1 million hours on calls during this year’s seven-week tax season.

Current figures show that the IRS has about 20,000 customer service employees.

This means that an average of 55 hours, or nearly seven eight-hour workdays, were lost per taxpayer this tax season, according to DailyMail.com’s calculations.

Customer service representatives either answer calls or handle letters from taxpayers, but they can’t do both. Even when call volume is low, representatives must work the phone.

However, this report only scratches the surface of what is really going on at the IRS, the employee claimed.

Remove staples

The employee claimed that inefficient staffing resulted in taxpayers having to wait for hours on the phone to receive assistance.

“There are customer service representatives who are tasked with answering correspondence and do nothing all day but pull staples out of papers,” they said.

“And management simply turns a blind eye.”

DECADES OLD SYSTEMS

“There’s a constant joke that some of the oldest systems were paid for by the Kennedy administration,” the employee told DailyMail.com.

“And the truth is, I think the jokes are very accurate.”

Although many of the computers have been updated, outdated legacy systems are still a problem, it was said.

“The systems are not available for about two weeks a year because they have to be offline for updates.”

“There’s no way to do updates locally. Many companies can do that now. For example, when Facebook does updates, it doesn’t have to be taken offline for two weeks – it only takes minutes.”

“But because we use legacy systems, we don’t have such options.”

If the systems were then shut down for weeks, this would cause significant problems for customer service, it was said.

“We have to piece together this old technology piece by piece because we can’t really afford to replace it or because there’s no good way to replace it.”

The employee claimed that ineffective staffing resulted in taxpayers having to wait on the phone for hours to receive assistance.

The IRS lost 55 hours of work per customer service representative this tax season due to its “inefficient” systems, a DailyMail.com analysis shows

The IRS is under criticism for its long waiting times (Pictured: IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel)

COMMUNICATION ERROR

Outdated systems also meant that account notes were not shared between different departments, the insider claimed.

“Customer service for debt collection is different from customer service for audits or reviews. The tools and notes each department accesses are completely different,” they said.

If someone has been audited, they explained, and contacts a different department a year later, the customer service representative will not know the details of the previous year’s audit.

“Such notes would be beneficial to the customer service representative, but the systems are all isolated, as are the different groups.”

“Everyone is isolated and there is not much communication between the systems. It’s not like we have one system for all tax matters. We have 10 or 15 different systems, and that may still be too few for the number of systems we have.”

This could lead to taxpayer frustration, they said, because they assume that the IRS employee has notes in front of him detailing all previous communications with the agency.

Instead of prioritizing critical changes, executives were pursuing prestige projects – such as the unnecessary introduction of Apple Mac computers – it was said.

“Leaders prioritize what they think is a great success, but in the end it is nothing more than trouble and something that is not sustainable in the long term.”

People are worried that they will lose their jobs if certain processes or positions are automated, they added.

The employee claimed that account notes are not shared between different departments, which can cause callers to become frustrated and abusive

TOXIC WORKPLACE

When employees are confronted with verbal abuse from taxpayers over the phone, there is no clear protocol on how to report or handle it, the insider claimed.

Callers often become frustrated, they said, especially when they expect the customer service representative to know their call history and previous calls to the IRS and when they wait a long time to be put through.

“People will insult us, shout at us, threaten us. They will treat us like we are scum. That’s probably the worst part,” they said.

“Unfortunately, if you hang up, your case may be reviewed by Congress because they may call their congressman who will then take up the matter.”

Congressional offices can step in and help Americans when they have problems with federal agencies like the IRS.

However, the employee claimed that there was no set standard among the various managers for what to do when a caller was aggressive.

“Some managers will tell you to put up with more abuse, and others will tell you not to put up with any at all.”

They claimed that many workers tolerate the abuse because they fear losing their jobs if the complaint is pursued.

DailyMail.com has reached out to the IRS for comment, and a representative referred to an April press release.

It highlighted numerous improvements that expanded service to millions of taxpayers during the 2024 tax filing season.

These included improvements in telephone service, more calls answered and faster response times.