IRS employees face taxpayer threats and assaults

The IRS needed to respond to nearly 800 employee reports of assaults and threats in recent years, but often not very promptly, according to a new report.  

The report, released Thursday by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, reviewed 790 potentially dangerous taxpayer cases from October 2019 to November 2022 and found it took an average of 30 calendar days from the date of the incident for the IRS to post an indicator of a potentially dangerous taxpayer indicator to the taxpayer’s account. The range of time for indicators to be entered on a potentially dangerous taxpayer’s account took from one to 1,058 calendar days. 

Guidance to IRS employees on how to report assaults and threats from taxpayers contained inaccurate, inconsistent information, including a fax number listed as a reporting option that no longer operated. The IRS provided different ways for employees to report assaults and threats, including contacting local TIGTA offices, calling various TIGTA or IRS telephone numbers, or completing online incident reporting forms on both TIGTA’s public website and the IRS’s internal website. TIGTA found several examples where the IRS listed different combinations of these reporting methods on its guidance documents. 

The report also found some issues with the IRS’s training and awareness efforts when it came to reporting assaults and threats against employees. TIGTA’s site visits found that not all IRS employees knew how to report assaults and threats. Only two of the 205 people whose jobs involved incident reporting had completed a required training course during fiscal year 2022. The training highlights the importance of employees reporting incidents and provides information on incident processing and reporting.

Threats against the IRS seem to have increased in recent years amid political pressures on the agency. “While most Americans respect IRS employees and its mission, taxpayers experiencing financial difficulties may feel increased pressure and act aggressively toward IRS employees,” said the report. “Unfortunately, this at times results in taxpayers assaulting or threatening an IRS employee. Ensuring the safety and protection of its employees, especially those who have direct contact with the public, is an issue that remains of continued concern for the IRS.”

The former president of the National Treasury Employees Union, Tony Reardon, wrote a letter last year to former IRS commissioner Charles Rettig, asking him to do more, and it was included in the report. “IRS workers are often targeted due to the nature of their work, which requires close interaction with the public. Too many times in the past, we have seen anti-government, anti-worker statements fuel violent attacks on innocent federal employees,” he wrote. “I was sickened to read a report of one political candidate who condoned shooting federal employees, including IRS employees ‘on sight.’ These public servants are doing the job that Congress asked of them, and they deserve to be protected.”

TIGTA made seven recommendations in the report to the IRS to correct the potentially dangerous taxpayer indicator process delays with new processes, address the inaccurate and inconsistent reporting messages to employees, ensure the required training course is added to all incident-reporting employees’ profiles and tracked for completion, and send a request to develop assault and threat reporting guidance in the form of a poster. 

The IRS agreed with all seven recommendations. The agency implemented a process to update its information system with notifications of investigation cases for immediate input of potentially dangerous taxpayer indicators. The IRS also developed a list of inaccurate information on reporting of assaults and threats and plans to update all its internal guidance with a unified message instructing employees on processes and procedures for reporting assaults and threats. The agency also added required training to incident reporting employees’ profiles and will send reminders to those who haven’t taken the training, as well as publish an incident-reporting banner that will be available for business units to order and post at their locations. 

“We appreciate that your report acknowledged that the IRS took timely actions in response to employee reports and threats,” wrote Richard Rodriguez, chief of IRS facilities management and security services, in response to the report. “Your recommendations will assist us in our efforts to ensure accurate and consistent information as to the process for employee reporting of assaults and threats.”