In the unlikely event that you can even get through to the IRS with a tax question, you're only three percentage points better off than if you just guessed - even on the most frequent and simple questions.

From an article in USA Today:

"Over a recent four-day period, auditors were unable to get through to an IRS employee on 37% of 368 test calls made to the IRS toll-free number, David C. Williams, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration, told the House Ways and Means oversight subcommittee on Tuesday.

When the auditors did reach someone, IRS officials gave the wrong answer 47% of the time. That happened even though the questions were drawn directly from the agency's own list of frequently asked questions."

This is evidently not going to deter them from increasing the rate of audits, in an ever-increasing proportion on middle class taxpayers, according to this:

"The IRS reversed a long, sharp slide in the number of taxpayers facing audits, the agency reported. It audited 1 in every 172 individual tax returns in the 12 months ending Sept. 30, 2001. That was more than the year before, when 1 in 204 returns was audited."

"More than 640,000 poor and middle-income workers were audited last year, up from 518,000 the year before. If one's income was less than $100,000, the chance of an audit rose 22%. More than half of audited returns involved people who claimed the earned income tax credit, generally those earning less than $32,000 a year."

However, an IRS spokesman claims that as recent new hires get up to speed, they'll be able to get that audit rate back up for the wealthy, too. Maybe they'll get all the way to the 1996 rate of 1 in 60 returns.

Your tax dollars at work.

Methinks perhaps they oughta spend the time and effort to get the damn answers right when you call them, but since you're still liable for their mistakes, what's their incentive? It makes more sense for them to give out bad advice, then they can dun you for interest and penalties, too.

This'll be great news for the underground economy. :-)

What will it take before the nation moves to a sane method of tax collection? The tax code, allegedly simplified and reformed a bit back, is so complex and convoluted to defy comprehension even among those taxed to enforce it. The average citizen is forced to pay expensive professionals to have a fighting chance of filing a correct, legal return.

The only solution I can imagine that could make sense would be to abolish the income tax, and replace it with some other method, perhaps a national sales tax.

Perhaps even better, a "Plain English" law, one with teeth, requiring that any law passed by the states or Federal government be understandable by a person of some reasonable standard of intelligence and education, would not only force a simplification of the tax code, (with the inevitable elimination of nearly all loopholes) but also free the American public from the tyranny of a whole host of burdensome, cryptic, regulations.

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