On Monday at the American Bar Association Section of Taxation meeting, Timothy McCormally of the IRS Office of Professional Responsibility was quoted by Tax Notes Today Federal as announcing “a practitioner priority hotline enhancement which is an effort to deal with robocalls into the IRS, and specifically the autodialer programs…”[1]

The article went on to quote Mr. McCormally as stating that the IRS would use an artificial intelligence tool to sort out automated calls and prevent “line-cutting through technology.”[2] While the article did not provide a date when the pilot program would begin to be rolled out, the article quoted Mr. McCormally as saying that it would be soon.[3]

It appears “soon” may have been four days later or there is a massive coincidence. On Friday, October 21 user @IbnDhabi on Twitter reported:

It looks like they started this morning with the practitioner line. They are now asking questions like what’s the sum of 4 + 1. And enQ wrote as of this morning that their suspending their services..[4]

The report appeared to be confirmed by the referenced posting on enQ’s website on the same morning:

EnQ is temporarily suspending services to: Practitioner Priority Service Business, Correspondence Examination Individual/Business, and Automated Underreporter due to changes on the IRS call center. Please direct your calls to other departments while we work on a solution.[5]

Based on this report, it appears that enQ at a minimum is planning to try and work around the IRS changes implemented on Friday morning. As well, the posting only references three IRS lines being involved, which would seem to confirm the report of a pilot test being run by the IRS.

What is likely to happen next? enQ would appear to be getting ready to attempt to go back online with an automated system that could deal with the IRS attempt to identify automated calling systems. If the current filter only asks such simple math questions, it seems as if a workaround is possible.

But if that happens, the question then becomes if the IRS has other systems they roll out as their latest one is eventually overcome by the automated systems. So, we could be in a long period of IRS filters that identify and block automated calls, followed by automated system fixes that bypass the IRS systems after which the cycle repeats again.

[1] Nathan A. Richman, “IRS Looking to Block Line-Jumping for Phone Calls,” Tax Notes Today Federal, October 18, 2022, https://www.taxnotes.com/tax-notes-today-federal/tax-technology/irs-looking-block-line-jumping-phone-calls/2022/10/18/7f83k (subscription required)

[2] Nathan A. Richman, “IRS Looking to Block Line-Jumping for Phone Calls,” Tax Notes Today Federal, October 18, 2022

[3] Nathan A. Richman, “IRS Looking to Block Line-Jumping for Phone Calls,” Tax Notes Today Federal, October 18, 2022

[4] https://twitter.com/IbnDhabi/status/1583310906309496832?s=20&t=2wWgNI3y_AQB22wzr5XjTQ

[5] enQ Website, October 21, 2022, https://callenq.com/ retrieved October 21, 2022