It’s long been a stupid cliche when athletes and others promise to give an impossible 110 or more percent effort towards their goals.  I found it funny that IRS is only promising to try to answer 71 percent of calls from the tax paying public and that is considered a great goal. 

If you are lucky enough to have your phone call answered after their expected average wait time of 12 minutes, there is then the issue of whether you will get the correct answers.  The odds of that happening are most likely going to be the same as in the past; 33% to 50%.  It’s like a lottery.

Of course, the double standard is firmly in place.  If you were to file a tax return with the stated goal of being 71% accurate in your figures, guess what hell you will be faced with.

If that were acceptable, the fine print info above the taxpayer’s signature on Page 2 of the 1040 would need to be modified to read as follows.

Under penalties of perjury, I declare that I have examined this return and accompanying schedules and statements, and to the best of my knowledge and belief, they are 71% true, correct, and complete. Declaration of preparer (other than taxpayer) is based on 71% of all information of which preparer has any knowledge.

There are a couple of lessons to be learned from this IRS announcement.

1.  Those people who foolishly try to save a few bucks by not utilizing the services of professional tax preparers will be risking their necks even more than ever.

2.  This same philosophy of striving for a 71% rate of answering the phone is what we can expect for our health-care after that entire segment of our society is socialized and IRS employees are put in charge of administering our medical treatment. A 29% death rate will be considered as a success.