NOW IT’S TAXING SEASON
IRS out of forms in NY
It’s taxpayer torture! With a week to go before Tax Day, frustrated New Yorkers spent hours waiting in line Wednesday for IRS help, only to be told the agency has run out of the forms— and even the paper to print more.
At the office in downtown Manhattan, hundreds of wouldbe filers snaked down Broadway, waiting an hour outside — and another hour once they got through the door. “It’s incredibly inconvenient that I have to stand in line for hours just to file my taxes,” griped Vaib Sager, 32, a Manhattan software project manager. “I just can’t believe this.”
The headaches come after the agency has lost 13,000 employees and $ 1.2 billion in funding since 2010.
Bronx resident T. C. Rice said he’s been scrambling from location to location in hopes of finding a 1040EZ form.
He said he first went to six public libraries — which no longer provide the forms— and when he finally got into the IRS’s Harlem office after waiting nearly 90 minutes, they were out of tax forms.
“It’s more than frustrating. It means I’m going to be late in filing my taxes because the government can’t give me the wherewithal to do it,” grumbled Rice, who works in security.
He ventured to the 290 Broadway office Wednesday after his overnight shift wrapped up at 8 a. m. — only to wait two hours, even though the office had just opened for the day.
Workers there told Rice they’d run out of copy paper — and couldn’t print off more tax forms.
“They cannot handle the crowds. The IRS has bungled it again,” he scoffed.
An IRS spokeswoman declined to comment, instead sending a press release that warned of “possible long lines . . . and long hold times on the phone.”
The IRS release advised using its Web site for taxrelated issues — which is fine for those with computers who can slog through the forms without help. “The line they feed you every time is, ‘ Well, you can just go online.’ If I could go online, I wouldn’t be here,” said Rice, who doesn’t have Web connection on his computer at home.
Last week, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen called this year’s tax-season blunders “abysmal.”
Responses to phone queries have plummeted to 40 percent — meaning six out of 10 people who call the IRS won’t be able to get through because of lack of workers, he said.