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Millions of Taxpayers Call the IRS for Help. Two-Thirds Don't Reach Anyone

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Re: Millions of Taxpayers Call the IRS for Help. Two-Thirds Don't Reach Anyone

#151

Post by giantg2 »

anon291 wrote: post #72
giantg2 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard to believe they actually get back to you and help. Any correspondence I've had with representatives is basically met with a form letter that doesn't even address the actual content of my concern.

If you send details about a particular case (rather than a general political issue) to their constitutent services department, they will often get back to you in a day.

In my case, they sent back a form letter about a similar issue, but it didn't address my specific issue.

Re: Millions of Taxpayers Call the IRS for Help. Two-Thirds Don't Reach Anyone

#153

Post by junar »

sandwitches wrote: post #126
anon291 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are an American citizen, just call your US representative. They will have you on the phone with an actual person at the IRS in a day or two. Literally, I've learned this lesson the hard way. The moment I have to wait more than an hour or so to figure out a government service or agency, I immediately lodge a formal complaint with my representative. They have a large staff dedicated to constituent services, and…

I shouldn't have to explain why this isn't a viable long-term solution, right?

Another perspective: The reality is that not all customer service is created equal, and for the individual, escalating through side channels is simply taking advantage of the system as designed.

> Much like the United States has decided, in its infinite wisdom, that caseworkers for immigration and passport services should be staffed in every Congressman’s office and not at the agency that actually handles immigration or passport issuance, there very likely exist people at the bank whose job is working the bank more than it is working for the bank.

> As a sophisticated user of the banking system, a useful skill to have is understanding whether the ultimate solution to an issue facing you is probably available to Tier Two or probably only available to a professional earning six figures a year. You can then route your queries to the bank to get in front of the appropriate person with the minimal amount of effort expended on making this happen.

> You might think bank would hate this, and aggressively direct people who discover side channels to Use The 1-800 Number That Is What It Is For. For better or worse, the side channels are not an accident. They are extremely intentionally designed. Accessing them often requires performance of being a professional-managerial class member or otherwise knowing some financial industry shibboleths. This is not accidental; that greatly cuts down on “misuse” of the side channels by that guy.

https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/seeing-like-a-bank/

Re: Millions of Taxpayers Call the IRS for Help. Two-Thirds Don't Reach Anyone

#154

Post by giantg2 »

ryandrake wrote: post #118
giantg2 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is increasing the enforcement arm going to help with these questions? Also, they are increasing the inforcement arm substantially, to the point it should be above the 2010 levels.

My understanding is part of the problem is that they have not been well-funded enough to even think about going after the top earners, who can easily afford to outnumber them with lawyers and CPAs. So, they give the people at the very top a pass because even if they are tax-dodgers, it's too expensive to prove it. Which leaves them going after middle class people who exaggerated their charitable deduction a little or…

The reason they don't go after the top is because the top use expert tax lawyers to file. Anything they do that is shady is ambiguous in the law and thus had a theoretical basis. The IRS isn't taking on those people because if they lose in court, they lose the people who were paying extra by not exploiting the loophole in good faith.

Also, they say they are focusing on entities making over $400k/yr. I'm sure there are exceptions and trust issues on that statement. We'll see.

Re: Millions of Taxpayers Call the IRS for Help. Two-Thirds Don't Reach Anyone

#155

Post by prepend »

ethbr1 wrote: post #119
doe_eyes wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a narrative that's easy to believe in because audit rates are going down. But when you think about it... why should be they going up? In the 1980s and before, the IRS literally had no way of knowing if you're telling the truth without auditing you. Everything was done on paper, cash was king. So the audits were indiscriminate and invasive, and needed a large army of employees to orchestrate. Now, the IRS knows a…

> Now, the IRS knows almost everything about your finances. They get electronic data from your employers, your bank, your brokerage. Most of commerce is settled electronically. Afaik, this is both true and not. The IRS gets very specific data points, that institutions are required by law to give them. That's largely a complete picture of your income , at least from sources that are required to report. What they have…

The difference is that they used to not get that info.

When I started filing taxes way back in the olden days, I had to mail a copy of my W2 to the IRS. I could alter it, not include it, whatever. So audits would verify all that.

Now w2s are sent electronically along with 1099s and everything else.

So it’s not perfect, but it’s much easier on the IRS now, than it used to be.

For most people, there are no expenses. You could lie about kids but you need socials. You could lie about tax or mortgage deductions but those data are sent to the IRS by institutions. You could lie about charities, but again that’s sent electronically.

There are some edge things, but they are really edge because most filers don’t have any deductions that are easy to lie about without detection.

Re: Millions of Taxpayers Call the IRS for Help. Two-Thirds Don't Reach Anyone

#156

Post by bpodgursky »

kube-system wrote: post #147
bpodgursky wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> e.g. part-time front-line customer service will prefix a statement with "uhhh..." if they don't actually know what they're talking about, even if they do have trouble answering accurately You can literally prompt GPT4 "Prefix a statement with uhhhh if you don't know what you are talking about" and get similar behavior.

That doesn't mean the 'uhhh...' is related to the certainty of the remainder of the response. I literally just tested your prompt, with the question "is the sky blue?" and chatgpt prefixed the response with "uhhh..." These models create the illusion of thought by statistically stringing words together, but they don't actually think or perform judgement of their own. Edit: After digging into this for a few minutes, I…

What model are you using? Here's 4o https://chatgpt.com/share/8815a841-d06b-4876-9d3e-7f5f4f1d7b....

Custom instructions: "If you aren't confident in your answer, prefix your response with "Uhhhhh". Otherwise answer the same as normal."

Re: Millions of Taxpayers Call the IRS for Help. Two-Thirds Don't Reach Anyone

#157

Post by cco »

noodlesUK wrote: post #76
doe_eyes wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a narrative that's easy to believe in because audit rates are going down. But when you think about it... why should be they going up? In the 1980s and before, the IRS literally had no way of knowing if you're telling the truth without auditing you. Everything was done on paper, cash was king. So the audits were indiscriminate and invasive, and needed a large army of employees to orchestrate. Now, the IRS knows a…

> Now, the IRS knows almost everything about your finances. They get electronic data from your employers, your bank, your brokerage. Most of commerce is settled electronically. Paypal and Venmo send them your info if you receive more than $500 in a year. There is nothing to be gained by randomly auditing the average family if the numbers on their report match what the IRS knows. The IRS can zero in on specific activi…

They're making progress there, they ran a trial with a limited number of states for a few years now and I believe this year or next year they're opening up direct e-filing with the IRS.

Re: Millions of Taxpayers Call the IRS for Help. Two-Thirds Don't Reach Anyone

#158

Post by wwweston »

alfalfasprout wrote: post #18

Taking a step back... one big problem is that our tax code is way too complex. It means that even common people are wading through a minefield every time they file their taxes. Between unclear deductions and credits, trickiness for those that have to pay estimated taxes, and a mafia led by Intuit lobbying against simple filing it's definitely a pay to play system. More broadly, our tax code is designed to benefit the…

This sounds a lot like “this codebase is too complex, probably because the last developers weren’t very good, we don’t need all these code branches and special cases, they’re just making it messy, it’s time for something simpler and cleaner” stuff that precedes the often underwhelming rewrite efforts that devs get sucked into.

I’m sure it’s possible to improve tax policy but that’d happen through specific conversation about how dynamics from specific relevant pieces of the tax code play out vs how they could play out, not through general judgements like “too complex” that are basically vibes-based.

Re: Millions of Taxpayers Call the IRS for Help. Two-Thirds Don't Reach Anyone

#159

Post by Atotalnoob »

prepend wrote: post #155
ethbr1 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now, the IRS knows almost everything about your finances. They get electronic data from your employers, your bank, your brokerage. Most of commerce is settled electronically. Afaik, this is both true and not. The IRS gets very specific data points, that institutions are required by law to give them. That's largely a complete picture of your income , at least from sources that are required to report. What they have…

The difference is that they used to not get that info. When I started filing taxes way back in the olden days, I had to mail a copy of my W2 to the IRS. I could alter it, not include it, whatever. So audits would verify all that. Now w2s are sent electronically along with 1099s and everything else. So it’s not perfect, but it’s much easier on the IRS now, than it used to be. For most people, there are no expenses. Yo…

Your W2 is sent to the irs from your employer, so them not matching would cause a giant red flag

Re: Millions of Taxpayers Call the IRS for Help. Two-Thirds Don't Reach Anyone

#160

Post by lesuorac »

fvrghl wrote: post #19
lesuorac wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

A majority doesn't mean much these days. A supermajority is necessary to get things passed that the other side doesn't agree with [1]. The democrats haven't had a supermajority since 2011 [2]. [1] https://www.governing.com/context/how-did-the-senate-end-up-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/111th_United_States_Congress

Majority means as much as they want it to.

The Cloture Rule is just a rule and such is modifiable with a simple majority (>50%) and has been rather recently so that judicial appointments could be made without needing 2/3 to override a filibuster. If Democrats wanted to actually govern without needing 2/3 of the votes in the senate they could've; however, much like the Republicans they aren't actually a homogenous block so removing the Cloture Rule would just demonstrate they aren't in agreement and look embarrassing (akin to Republicans not being able to agree on a speaker of the house).

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