The IRS is hiring 4,000 customer service employees ahead of the 2023 tax season

The IRS said this week that it has hired an additional 4,000 help desk representatives who are being trained to answer taxpayer questions for the 2023 tax filing season.

It’s part of the new hiring made possible when Democrats in Congress gave the IRS An $80 billion funding boost during the next decade under Law on reducing inflationwhat a president biden signed the law in August. It’s designed to help rebuild an agency that hasn’t received additional funding in decades.

The Internal Revenue Service is still figuring out how to spend the extra $80 billion, but has stressed that resources will be focused on improving customer service and monitoring high-income earners. New employees receive training on taxpayer rights and technical account management.

Last tax season, the IRS answered so few phone calls from taxpayers that a bipartisan group of lawmakers wrote to agency officials complaining that calls were only being answered 9% of the time.

“Help is on the way”

Treasury and IRS officials have said they want to end it poor customer service.

“We have not been able to provide the relief that the IRS wants and that the nation’s taxpayers deserve,” IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig said Thursday, “but taxpayer relief is on the way.”

“As new employees are trained and go online in 2023, we will have more phone assistants than at any time in recent history,” he added.

But IRS officials aim to add another 1,000 customer service representatives by the end of the year, bringing the total number of new employees in the field to 5,000.