Originally published on Forbes.com.
Long wait times on calls to the IRS are nothing new. But now there is something you can do about it – maybe. Only it will cost you. And the whole notion has me angry. Although my inner villain is in love with the idea and castigating me for not thinking of it myself. The solution is the brain child of Andrew Valiente, the founder and CEO of CallEnQ. He is moving to this new enterprise from a background in high frequency trading, a field that is in my mind of dubious social utilty. When I was on Wall Street trading was a lot more expensive and there was lot less of it and at least to working stiffs it seemed like the real economy was working a lot better.
A New Solution
Here is the deal that Mr. Valiente is offereing. When you want to call the IRS instead of calling the IRS and waiting on hold for a couple of years , you call his company enQ enQ already has a place near the front of the line, which it sells to you. This video explains the process
According to the website, the charge will be about fifteen cents per minute of wait time saved (I don’t know how they figure that out), which I make to be about nine bucks an hour. According to this story Mr. Valiente claims that the spots that his company takes in the line won’t appreciably affect the wait times for everybody else.
He speculates that the calculated calling does not add to normal wait times for nonpaying citizens.
“The percentage of the calls that we make relative to the mass amount that are inbound from everyone else is quite small,” Valiente said.
I really hope that this plan does not work, because there is something about it that offends my sensibilities. It is taking something that is free now and turning it into a commodity. I could build a rationale for it, but I rate this as worse than what the rental car companies do when they sell the same couple of gallons of gas over and over and try to intimidate you into buying overpriced insurance. Or the airlines who arrange their cabins on the principle that most people are short and charge extra for seats that don’t require people over six feet tall to contort themselves.
Some Comments
I reached out to a few people for their thoughts on it. Paul Steckfus of the EO Tax Journal wrote
I guess I’ve gotten used to those with the bucks getting to the front of the line — e.g., DisneyWorld. I don’t know if it still goes on, but in the old days lobbyists would hire messengers to stand in line for them for a congressional hearing. The lobbyist would arrive in time for the hearing and take the place of the messenger who had been in line for an hour. I found that irritating because I had been in line for an hour, and couldn’t afford a stand-in
There is a point there, but the difference is with the stand-in is that the lobbyists weren’t taking a place in line on spec.
Another one of my sources, who prefers to stay off the record wrote
This is pretty innovative. Actually, the IRS could do something like that, by giving priority service on hotlines, etc., that its computer shows has filed income tax returns for the past, say, six years. The opening robotic answer on the phone line would be to enter your SSN (assuming calling about individual income tax) and then be placed in a filing compliant line (shorter and better manned or womanned) or a filing noncompliant line.
Of course, perhaps that would be sending the wrong message to the filing noncompliant when getting them talking with the IRS is a good thing and might lead to filing compliance.
I think I agree with my friend’s qualification. The non-compliant should not be made to wait longer. If anything you would bump them to the head of the line. Kind of like the prodigal son.
Bob Baty, a retired IRS appeals officer, who assiduously follows the Kent Hovind matter and the parsonage exclusion, wrote me
I wonder how many time the IRS is going to be answering the phone in such cases and no one will be there. Does the company have a way to hide what they are doing so that such calls cannot be identified?
As they also say, “there ought to be a law against it”!
Alas, if it is legal and it works, it could turn out the be a billion dollar business for someone as the deal expands to all sorts of call-in lines throughout government and private industry………right?
In the story, there was mention of something in enQ’s software that prevents it from holding all the way up to being answered. If there were loads of dropped calls, that would probably provoke an IRS response.
Matt Erskine who runs a boutiqe law practice focusing on unique assets wrote me.
I think that this is not jumping the line as such. It is paying someone to wait in line for you instead. This is basically what I do with my Secretary. She calls and sits on hold and when the agent gets on she transfers it to me. It is less expensive for my clients that way. I would have a problem if the IRS was getting paid to give preference since that looks like a bribe but paying someone else to do stand in line so of speak is not objectionable to me.
Mr. Valiente Responds
Mr. Valiente responded to my concern that his service would cause wait times to get even worse.
To reiterate the problem: Less than 4 out of 10 callers talk to an IRS live agent and the average hold time is 30 min . Last week, I saw hold times exceed 93 min. enQ’s mission is that all enQ customers wait an average of 3 min to talk to a live agent.
My answer to your question is: in the short-term no and in the long-term no.
In the short term, our call volume will be such a small percentage of total calls that the effect on hold times will be minimal.
In the long term no for two reasons:
First, a free service that enQ provides is to publish the current IRS hold times. Callers can now check the IRS congestion before they call, which they were previously unable to do. The hold time feedback will motivate non-paying customers to shift their call volume to non-peak times, while paying customers have the option of not waiting. Because of this hold time feedback, I estimate that the average hold time will go down as the distribution of calls throughout the day will flatten.
Second, the existence of enQ is a win-win situation for the American people. The IRS may be motivated to improve customer service and drive enQ out of business. Thus, enQ is a catalyst for shorter hold times and better IRS customer service for the American people which will happen one way or another.
I still don’t like it, but I’m kind of a stubborn old cuss and I have to thank Mr. Valiente for responding so quickly.
In a follow-up, he wrote me:
Paying for better service is not unique to enQ: first class air travel, concert front row seats, velvet rope clubs, etc .It is also true in getting close to the government: the Washington lobbyist industry
Other Coverage
Accounting Today has a story on the service. One of the commenters noted that the IRS had previously shut down similar services. We can only hope.
About My Wall Street Days
I probably should not exagerate my Wall Street credentials. My father spent his career as a senior order clerk wearing a headset talking to traders on the floor from slips of paper that registered reps had written trades on. I worked two summers as a runner. Trades that crossed between two firms required the delivery of paper securities within, I think, ten days and the cutting of checks. We spent the morning delviering securities and the afternoon picking up checks. So trading was a lot slower and a lot more expensive and in that environment when I moved to a union factory job, I made enough money in a summer to pay a years tuition at a not so shabby college. At any rate, that is what makes me skepitcal of the social utility of high speed trading.