November 2, 2022: The IRS said it had passed a milestone of hiring 4,000 new customer service workers as the agency prepares for the 2023 tax filing season.

Hired over the past several months, these workers have been trained to assist taxpayers, including phone support, which has struggled with high call volumes during the pandemic.

“The IRS is fully committed to providing the best service possible. We are moving quickly to use the new funding to help taxpayers during the busy tax season,” said IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig.

“As the newly hired employees are training and move online in 2023, we will have more assistors on the phone than any time in the history,” Rettig said.

The IRS plans to hire another 1,000 customer service workers by the end of the year. According to the agency, almost all training will be complete by Presidents Day 2023, when the highest call volumes typically occur.

However, phone wait times remain high in the meantime, and the IRS encourages taxpayers to visit IRS.gov for answers to questions. “IRS employees look forward to providing better service shortly,” Rettig added.

Enacted in August, the Inflation Reduction Act allocated nearly $80 billion to the agency over the next ten years, with funds earmarked for enforcement, operations, taxpayer services, technology, a direct free e-file system development, and more.

According to the IRS, as of October 14, 2022, the agency had 5.1 million unprocessed individual tax returns received in 2022, including late-filed returns from previous years,

Rettig, in March, told the House Ways and Means Committee that he expects the backlog will “absolutely” resolve before December.