IRS adds 4,000 new workers funded by the Inflation Reduction Act

Oct. 28 (UPI) -- The Internal Revenue Service announced Friday it has hired 4,000 new "customer service representatives" to help answer phones and provide other services to U.S. taxpayers.

The IRS said the hirings are part of a much wider improvement effort tied to funding from the Biden administration Inflation Reduction Act.

"Our phone lines have been simply overwhelmed during the pandemic, and we have been unable to provide the help that IRS employees want to give and that the nation's taxpayers deserve. But help is on the way for taxpayers," said IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig in a statement. "As the newly hired employees are trained and move online in 2023, we will have more assistors on the phone than any time in recent history."

The IRS plans to add another 1,000 employees by the end of this year to serve the public. Almost all the training for the 5,000 newly hired workers will be completed by President's Day 2023.

Rettig said that even though these new hires are in the pipeline, agency phone lines are still extremely busy. As a result, Rettig is urging people to continue to use IRS.gov for tax question information.

The new hires will get weeks of training and many will be in place for the beginning of the 2023 tax season, according to the IRS.

In January an independent government watchdog organization released a report that said the IRS was "in crisis" trying to deal with a backlog of millions of tax returns as it dealt with pandemic complications.