Try Calling the IRS, Forget It – They Won’t Answer the Phone and Hung Up on 8.8 Million Callers Last Year

Try Calling the IRS, Forget It – They Won’t Answer the Phone and Hung Up on 8.8 Million Callers Last Year

Republican cuts to the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) budget are manifesting as trouble for American taxpayers by degrading the service that they can expect from their government. During this most recent tax season, the IRS hung up on 8.8 million taxpayer, reportedAllGov.com.

According to a report from the National Taxpayer Advocate Service (NTAS), the IRS disconnected from so many people because they lacked enough staff to handle the large call volume. Last year, that number was nowhere near as bad, with 500,000 disconnections. The problem has grown exponentially since then. Last year, the average hold time for callers was 14 minutes. That time increased to 23 minutes by this most recent tax season.

“Millions of taxpayers were unable to reach the IRS by phone; millions did not receive a timely response (if any) to their correspondence; and many more may have had to pay a tax preparer or professional for answers to tax law questions,” wrote NTAS researcher Nina Olson.

Since 2010, Congress has cut IRS funding by $1.2 billion. This effort has been led by Congressional Republicans. The GOP has long been an enemy of the IRS and seeks to find any possible means of dismantling the agency. Having trouble with the IRS? Blame the Republicans.

Via RIng of Fire Radio

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Report: NSA Spied on 124 Billion Phone Calls in One Month

The National Security Agency recorded information about more than 124 billion phone calls during a 30-day period earlier this year, including around 3 billion calls from U.S. sources, according to a tally from top-secret documents released by multiple news outlets.

Documents revealing details about the NSA’s Boundless Informant program show that information regarding billions of phone calls and computer communications was collected by the agency from across the world.

Boundless Informant “allows users to select a country on a map and view the meta data volume and select details about the collections against that country,” according to the Guardian, which first reported on the top secret program earlier this year.

Multiple leaked screenshots of the Boundless Informant program show that information on around 124.8 billion phone calls were collected in just 30-days this year, according to documents released by the Guardian and other news sites.

The documents provide a window into the sheer volume of data being collected by the NSA as late as March of this year, according to the Guardian.

Critics of the NSA’s multiple data collection programs, which include PRISM, argue that innocent Americans run the risk of having their personal communications monitored. Its defenders maintain that the program has been a key tool in the fight against terrorism.

Via: WFB

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