Auditors posing as the taxpaying public say IRS.gov provides good customer service, but telephone assistance options fall short.

A July 22 Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration report (.pdf) says that auditors needed on average approximately 11 minutes to research a series of tax law questions on IRS.gov--and that the online information is 100 percent accurate.

The tax agency's website has notably improved since TIGTA looked at it in 2007 for a customer experience review. The IRS posts the types of questions Taxpayer Assistance Center assistors are authorized to answer and prominently displays a link to a list of centers when taxpayers search for center locations. Since the 2007 filing season, the IRS also increased the number of interactive tools on IRS.gov, including the Interactive Tax Assistant and web chat, according to auditors.

During the 2011 filing season, the IRS reported more than 188.9 million visits to IRS.gov. In that same period "thousands of taxpayers" engaged with IRS social media tools.

The IRS publishes informational tax videos in English and several languages, including American Sign Language, on YouTube. It now has three Twitter handles--for individuals, tax professionals and Spanish speakers--to broadcast news and guidance with links to tax information. A smartphone app called "IRS2Go" launched in January 2011 and allows taxpayers to check on the status of their tax refund and receive tax tips. The agency is also using podcasts and widgets that feature the latest tax initiatives and programs and can be embedded on websites, according to the TIGTA report.

The July 22 TIGTA audit has only one more recommendation for IRS.gov. To improve customer service and reduce assistance time, the site should inform taxpayers that they may be asked to provide identification and social security numbers, the report says.

While IRS web and social media services are meeting the mark, IRS's Toll-Free Telephone Assistance Line does not receive such a favorable review. Auditors obtained correct responses to all 15 test questions they asked when posing as members of the public, but it took an average of 25 minutes to complete each call. Auditors waited an average of 17 minutes to speak with assistors--compared to a less than 10-minute wait during the 2011 filing season and an average wait of 2 minutes during the 2007 season, according to the report.

The TeleTax Line--which saw a 17 percent drop in usage in the 2011 filing season and is only used by approximately 230,597 taxpayers--performed even worse than the assistance line. Auditors call the system "antiquated and difficult to use."

Using the TeleTax Line, auditors found answers to four of their five questions and the average time to obtain the answers was 18 minutes. The maximum wait time was 42 minutes and one auditor was disconnected twice, write report authors. TIGTA recommends taxpayers bypass TeleTax altogether and instead call the 1040 line or use IRS.gov.

For more:
- see the TIGTA report (.pdf) 

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