Blame congress for the IRS - certain political elements would like to eliminate the IRS - they have this idea, that if we starve it, people will hate it so much we can make it go away.

Nevermind the fact that the IRS wont go away till there isnt an income tax anymore.

Taxes could also be a lot easier if Congress didn’t buy into lobbying from Intuit and other tax preparers to keep taxes complicated so individuals had to figure out their own taxes and spend inordinate amounts of time and effort determining out how to properly fill out every form.

That's a totally different issue from Congress failing to properly fund the IRS, a profit centre! It's one of the frew areas of government that spending money on makes money.

> It's one of the frew areas of government that spending money on makes money.

In a well run government, everything the government does should result in a benefit to the civilization and by it, the government. For example, adequately maintaining roads or other public infrastructure will save money on expensive urgent restauration works (e.g. when a water main explodes or a bridge collapses), as well as promote company growth (e.g. by building real, fast internet connectivity via local government owned utilities, thus enabling modern companies to work) which causes tax income to rise.

Even stuff that does not seem to be profitable at all in the long run makes profits. Take environment protection as an example: preventing or cleaning up pollution saves cost in the medical system (and even if it's a mess like in the US where most of it is privatized, the "win" is more worker productivity because they're not ill as much as before and can work more - or criminality decreases like w/ lead exposure), and trying to prevent climate change due to rising temperature will prove worth the money when the government saves money that would be spent on relocating people on the coasts.

Someone else put it perfectly when they said when cities decide each year whether to pay into pensions or fix failing infrastructure, they go with the option that won't sue them.

Ever wonder why we have the grant system we do?

> they go with the option that won't sue them.

Well, if your infrastructure explodes like that bridge in Italy, then the survivors will sue... it's gambling, just with lives at stake.

Governments (worldwide) should be forced to a different accounting model - where maintenance for everything they build (infrastructure) or buy (IT software!) over the lifetime has to be budgeted for. No more expensive nutjobs like Olympic Games which will be unmaintainable after the single use...

Good customer support doesn't cost much more than bad customer support. They are people earning close to minimum wage who provide good customer support. The problem is that the IRS doesn't care to provide good customer support because they have no need to.

Test your hypothesis. By that argument tax collection agencies in all comparable states should behave similarly.

Just below the article someone comments that the Australian tax office has excellent support. Several European ones I have been in touch with have been very helpful as well (UK, Germany).

One thing that does differentiate the US from those places is the existence of a strong political force hostile to the idea of federal government ("drown it in the bath tub").

So the hypothesis that this is a home made political problem rather than an inevitable structural outcome of incentives fits the data better.

I can tell you from personal experience that many EU states have absolutely terrible tax agencies, even worse than what was described - namely Czechia, Slovakia, Poland, Croatia, Hungary. Everyone here "knows" it's because they have absolutely zero motivation to provide good services.

Don't just look at first world countries. Even though the USSR had high taxes I doubt that their tax authority had good customer service.

They actually did. Some family members lived there thru previous system and praised it many times. The current regime is a joke but the previous one (even more horrible) cared only about collecting taxes. New system dont care up to the point you go to jail, no big deal to “it”; in USSR the whole concept was of a working unit. Unity in strength of every individual working. You cant work when you behind bars. They once had supervisor fired on spot because indeed he was explaining tax related problem wrong.

> they have this idea, that if we starve it, people will hate it so much we can make it go away.

Not just congress uses this tactic. See: CFPB.

Centrelink, Australia's welfare and social services provider, has this beat. You can't get service in offices anymore without an appointment. If you try to do something transactional they direct you to a bank of Internet-connected computers where you have to go through their website. For elderly or less technologically literate people this is an absolute nightmare. If you can't do it online you have to call them. Again, if you try in their offices they will send you to a phone which you can use. Official average wait times are 16 minutes but that's bullshit. Everybody has had the experience of waiting for 2.5 hours, and then getting cut off when the robot answering the call inevitably transfers you to the wrong department. People have literally attempted suicide when faced with the prospect of having to deal with Centrelink again. Our government of sociopaths applauds this system, seeing it as a deterrent for people to be on welfare and encouraging them to "get a job".

When I was younger and worked for an ISP, I had one of the VoiceOps people assign me a VoIP number.

The number is (08) 80087355 - which is leetspeak for oh eight boobless.

Anyway, one year I discovered calling Centrelink from that number bumps me to the top of the phone queue because the 08 8008 part of the phone number is assigned to a geographic region in remote NSW, even though the area code is 08 because it's closer to Adelaide than Sydney (Broken Hill's area code is also 08).

It looks like this still works, as per the Centrelink website here:

https://www.humanservices.gov.au/individuals/subjects/paymen...

Our rural call centres answer calls from dedicated catchment areas in rural Queensland and South Australia. Our specialist staff answer all calls made to Centrelink 13 numbers from the catchment areas. They also answer all calls made to the Farmers Assistance hotline from anywhere in Australia.

Bonus points for being able to keep this number on a $0 per month pay what you use plan.

Tried to call them recently while on my commute and using a headset and was rudly told that I wasn't allowed to use hands free to call them.

This was to change the address on my Medicare card as it's all Human Services now.

Straight to the back of the cue if you get disconnected or can't answer every identifying question off the top of your head.

I've had a couple run ins with the IRS.

Oddly, my situations were all very pleasant. My contact with the IRS was all by mail. Each time I'd mail them something a clock would restart (6 weeks or something like that) and they'd respond a few weeks later (clock restarts) and we'd go back and forth me sending them some paperwork, and they asking for something else.

Eventually they got what they needed and we all moved on. It was a bit drawn out but I also enjoyed the amount of time I had to respond.

On the other hand when it comes to insurance I had a run in with State Farm who I'm 99% sure has a system entirely setup to ask repeat questions (same person asking the same questions and they're looking at the paperwork where I already answered it too...), provide inaccurate information, and simply delay you long enough to drop whatever claim you have. It felt like an actual scam...

My experience with the IRS was the same. On one hand the slowness with which they operate is ridiculous (does it really take a year and a half to tell you that some documentation in your return doesn't match up? and a couple months for every subsequent response?). On the other - once they got all the required documentation they were fair, acknowledged their mistakes, and adjusted the bill accordingly (canceled, really, since once everything was refigured the total was negligible). They're a bureaucracy, but they're not really an evil bureaucracy.

I suspect the slowness and the suddenness of a "you owe us X" is pretty stressful for many people. But if you read the letters it is mostly "hey send us some stuff so we can look at it" and while drawn out.... my experiences were fair and completed normally (granted that is just one experience).

At one point I printed the wrong thing entirely... they just sent a letter telling me I sent them the wrong thing and the clock kept restarting.

The people I spoke with weren't necessarily hostile (and I was always super calm and reasonable).

It's just taking forever and they sent a lot of paperwork that conflicted with other letters they sent. They kept sending bills stating I owed X by Y when in reality I had sent in what they asked for which would null those bills a month before that bill arrived.

The people on the phone also typically said they can't help because the questions I were asking could only be answered by my auditor, but I was never allowed to talk to that person.

Customer support is something I partly do for a living (supporting the video courses I create) and I think keeping people in the loop and providing more information rather than less is really important when something goes wrong. No one wants to feel like they are getting ignored or tossed around in a system with millions of others.

For context, I single handily do personal 1 on 1 support for around 40,000 people and it doesn't take that long because I invested a lot of time in my product and systems to make things as streamlined as possible. I'm confident I could continue giving high levels of personal support even with 100,000 people just based on time spent doing support now vs doing other things.

Here's a fun fact. As of 2014, the IRS had 94,516 employees. I'm sure it's grown since then, there's also 325 million people in the US. I know not each employee deals with customer service but that's a ratio of 1 IRS employee to every 3,438 citizens of the US. Even if only half of those people are doing customer related services, that's an abysmal ratio -- especially considering those people are doing that job full time and the IRS has spent a ridiculous amount of money running this operation (11 billion+ a year) to create a nearly unusable product.

I live in New Zealand - things are much much simpler when the country is small.

Generally New Zealand govt services are fast and painless. If I ring the IRD (==IRS) they just register the phone number and call back. The person is genuinely helpful, and they generally are just keen to get your money with the least amount of hassle to anyone. Very simple taxation policy helps too (e.g. totally reduced the special taxation cases, such that most people have to spend zero time filing taxes, it is done automatically and you just get a bill or refund!).

I ordered a replacement passport last week - it was all online including the uploading the photo - and it was couriered to me a few days later.

This is repeated in many different services. There are horror stories -- mostly I hear them about health/ACC and sometimes Work and Income (social welfare). But you regularly hear good stories about those too.

So it is at least possible for monopoly services to be good.

In Switzerland (pop 8M), tax authority is not hold by federal government but by the 26 cantons[1]. Because the central government would be way too big for that much power in the eyes of the Swiss people.

[1]that’s also why we have a bunch of tax havens and generally a lower tax rate, as all cantons and even the communes within them are in a competition.

> I ordered a replacement passport last week - it was all online including the uploading the photo

Is it me, or is does this seem like a case where they simplified so much that they lost some of the inherent checks and balances in the system?

I guess if I need a fake passport, I have a lead on how one can be made. Just social engineer the info to access government services out of a New Zealander...

I believe you can only do the online process once you've already had a passport and the initial passport is issued by the "traditional" means of showing up in person.

Replacements and renewals can be done entirely online because of facial biometrics (to compare the previous passport photograph with the new one and to see if the new picture may be used elsewhere) and digitization of other records for internal comparisons.

ABC (Australia) has an interesting video on Youtube describing the process.

I renewed my US passport last year and that was entirely done through the mail. Why is uploading a photo inherently less secure than mailing a photo?

I was under the impression that you had to have your photo taken at the post office. In the case where you've already provided verifying documentation, having that official also take the picture neatly verifies the picture at the time of the application.

I just looked, and apply by mail is only available in certain situations, one of which is that it must be a renewal, and the prior on must have been within the last 15 years and you must have been over 16. It sort of makes sense with those rules, but still seems somewhat lax to me.

I mean, ok, this is Australia not New Zealand, but ...

https://youtu.be/81FGVh1dj0A?t=1m14s

Some politicians have the goal of making these things run as ineffectively as possible. Underfunding initiatives and then claiming they don't work well is a tried and tested method for attacking government services.

NZ's taxation department has suprisingly good customer service - but from what I understand, that's a deliberate way to get people to give them more money without having to use their coercive powers.

You shouldn’t deal with the IRS yourself. Hire a lawyer. They have the relevant expertise and can handle things much more efficiently.

Also don't deal with them by phone. Use written letters, sent by certified mail.

Neither the health insurance issue nor the sidewalk was under US government purview.

In fact, repair of sidewalks between private property and the street are almost always the responsibility of the property owner.

> Neither the health insurance issue nor the sidewalk was under US government purview.

It is when health insurance is mandatory (enforced by the US govt) and not having it causes you to pay unavoidable penalties which get added to your govt taxes.

> In fact, repair of sidewalks between private property and the street are almost always the responsibility of the property owner.

This really depends where you live. In this case it was the town's responsibility (and it's documented in the town's codes).

It was a really dangerous road too. It was one of those decently trafficked 30 mph suburban roads with properties alongside the road. If you tripped the wrong way on that sidewalk you had a decent chance of ending up in the middle of the road.

>> Neither the health insurance issue nor the sidewalk was under US government purview. > It is when health insurance is mandatory (enforced by the US govt) and not having it causes you to pay unavoidable penalties which get added to your govt taxes.

How does that follow? The government says you need insurance. It doesn’t say you have to buy from that company or that companies can’t compete on customer service.

If your car insurance company has bad customer service, do you think it’s your state government’s fault, too? My mortgage company requires homeowner’s insurance – is it their fault if I pick a company with bad support?

Do you live in the US? People often have exactly one choice of health insurance because the ones that don't come from your employer are far to expensive to afford. Even in a 2 income house one partners may be substantially worse or nonexistent.

The ACA changed this dynamic in areas with competitive markets by providing subsidies that allowed people options. This is going away.

The unsubsidized options would cost almost 1/2 of my pre tax income and my wife has major medical difficulties that preclude her continuing her career and cost significant sums. I have asthma difficulties which without insurance would 4000 just so I can keep breathing.

I would have options if we moved to a cardboard box in order to pay for different insurance.

Don’t ask me to defend the American healthcare system in any way. I just don’t see how poor customer service should be blamed on the government rather than the company, or seen as a sign that the current model is incurably broken.

The government creates the framework in which everyone operates.

Again, how does that proposed relationship work? Does the government force those companies to have bad service or is your claim essentially that the government is failing to force them to spend more on customer service?