At the board meeting on March 28, 2023, California's income tax agency, the Franchise Tax Board, is going to ask for $25.23 million more dollars so they can hire more customer service agents and give raises to existing agents:https://www.ftb.ca.gov/about-ftb/meetings/board-meetings/2023/march-2023/5.2_budget_change_proposal_customer_service_resources_cover_sheet.pdf.

To justify this request, FTB just released the following data:

54% of live chats go unanswered (page 3)

Correspondence sent via USPS is processed within 4 - 5 months (page 3)

Correspondence sent via MyFTB is processed within 30-days (page 8)

Only 40% of calls are answered (page 12)

FTB also disclosed that they have very high attrition rates for people who work in customer service. They attribute it to low pay and it being a stressful job (page 11).

In the document  FTB admits that people were having penalties falsely imposed due to lack of customer service. The document doesn’t admit that they falsely impose wage garnishments, levies and liens, but it is implied with words such as “moved into involuntary collections.”  

FTB is asking for $25.23 million more dollars so they can hire more staff to improve these numbers and give raises to existing staff to keep them from quitting. Their goals are: 75% of calls and live chats answered, 10-day turn time for correspondence sent via MyFTB and 30-day turn time for correspondence sent via fax.

The problem is that, even if FTB gets all the money they are asking for, the customer service levels will still be poor and thus false penalties will be imposed, along with false wage garnishment, levies and liens.

I have been fighting corruption at the Franchise Tax Board since 2016. I have caught them running 8-unlawful schemes to overcharge taxpayers: https://gwsandiego.net/blog/?p=611.

I have documented that part of the way FTB gets away with these schemes is via making “mistakes” then making impossible to correct those mistakes. Even at 75% of calls answered, people will have difficulty getting through to an agent to straighten out issues. With 30-day turn times on processing mail, protests and disputes don’t get processed until after it is too late: the penalties and “involuntary collections” have already been imposed.

Needless to say, these difficulties in “customer service” disproportionately affect people of lower socioeconomic status... the people who can't call in many times until they get through to an agent, the people who can't afford to fed-ex correspondence and have to send it via USPS... yet the same administrators are not practicing what they preach when it comes to "equity."