It Happens Every Year

Okay, picture this.

You’re an experienced tax preparer and heading into this filing season everything appears to be in order – software updated and in place, per diems hired and anxious to begin work and clients have dutifully begun dropping off their tax organizers.

Roughly three and a half months later, you swear that 2015 was the worst season on record and vow never to go through another one.

Sound familiar?

Trust me, it’s a depressing refrain we at our company hear annually from clients.

Not to be the dorsal fin at a shipwreck, but this season promises to be just as bad – if not worse.

And that’s not my opinion, but that of one Nina Olson, the Taxpayer Advocate at the IRS in her annual report to Congress.

I won’t reiterate chapter and verse of her testimony before lawmakers, but suffice to say that her liberal use of phrases such as “devastating erosion of taxpayer service,” and “perfect storm of trouble” does nothing to instill optimism in both preparers and DIYers.

Roughly 200 million people interact with the IRS over the course of a year – three times as many as any other government agency. Olson cited among other factors: budget cuts that resulted in having to jettison some 12,000 employees, a brewing scandal of investigations of Tea Party organizations that severely damaged its credibility and the inevitable last minute tax law changes especially ObamaCare and you have a recipe for, well, the above-mentioned perfect storm.

Want more cheery news?

According to Olson, just a decade earlier, 87 percent of all callers to the IRS got through with an average wait time of a reasonable 2.5 minutes. In 2015, she estimates that less than half will connect with an IRS rep and those who do manage to get through are likely to face waiting times of 30 minutes or more.

Let’s hope you have a good book handy.

Also, did I forget to mention that any questions regarding the tax code had best be of a basic nature – during the filing period, the IRS will not answer any difficult ones and once the season is complete, it will not any answer any tax-law questions at all.

Got that? AT ALL.

I’m sure the 15 or so million people who file extensions are doing cartwheels over that announcement.

So come the end of April, I’m preparing myself to go into full psychologist mode when our clients bemoan the trials and tribulations of the 2015 1040 season and begin to flirt with the idea of either selling out or merging to a larger firm with more resources.

And like in years past, I’ll resist the urge to say “I told you so.”