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Longs lines at IRS Assistance Centers

Posted at 5:53 PM, Mar 02, 2016
and last updated 2016-03-03 05:19:31-05

It’s bad enough when someone rips off your identity. But waiting hours and hours in a line to fix it is doubly frustrating.

Wanda Rivera of Spring Hill has no choice but to wait like the other folks standing in this line outside a Tampa IRS office on Columbus Avenue.

MORE INFO | Avoid the lines and hold times, use online tax help

"I was two hours on the phone with them. By the end, they say, 'No, you have to go in person,' so that's why I'm here, to do the same thing I already did,” Rivera said.

"That's why everyone complains about Washington, D.C.. This is really frustrating for many, many people,” Theo Ferguson said.

In some cases, taxpayers say they’ve waited four to six hours, all day, just to be turned away.

"I'm not sure how long it's going to take before I get it. I hope it's before they close,” Jessica Makas said.

The IRS says the lines are common because of cutbacks.

A statement from the IRS says, "It is not unusual for some IRS Taxpayer Assistance Centers to have long wait lines during the busy tax filing season.” It goes on to say that “limited resources have impacted some IRS services.”

"The length of time I've been here waiting has been too long, I would say, for that. I'll probably only be in there about 10 minutes to get what I gotta get,” Billy Wiggins said.

The IRS statement also says as the April tax deadlines gets closer, the lines will likely only get worse.

"It's very easy to find them, I believe, when you owe them money because they're everywhere to be found. When they owe me money, which has been the case since last year, I have been chasing them because someone took my identify,” Magsoodi said.