Welcome to the willis report. Your show, your money, your voice. And tonight your calls to the irs, well, theyre going unanswered. Over 61 of the people trying to talk to a Customer Service representative at the irs actually got through to somebody last year. Thats according to a watchdog report. That left millions of us to figure out how to comply with our complex tax code ourselves. With more on this, scott hodge president of the tax foundation. Welcome back to the show, scott. I went on the website; right. Here is what they say. They say call us with your questions. Right. Gerri available monday through friday. Not so true; right . Not so true, gerri. As the [laughter] as the Taxpayer Advocate found when you call the irs, youre not only not likely to get through and get a real person on the phone, but youre probably going get a wrong answer. Thats part of the problem. The real root cause of this, erri, is the come complexity of the tax system. We handed the irs an Impossible Task of trying implement the complicated gerri all right. Get to obamacare in a second. I want to go through the numbers. They are pretty shocking; right . 4 Million Words in the tax code. Thats more than shakespeare ever wrote. Theyre a lotless understandable. 20 million calls unanswered out 1600 million calls to the irs. People are really calling in looking for help, looking for assistance. Why is it so hard to understand the tax code . Well, congress made it too complicated. We have dozen of tax credits, and loopholes. Its too complicated. Its why its costing us about 6 billion hours every year to comply with the tax code and a cost of 16 0 billion a year. And thats why, i think, 80 of all americans pay someone else to do their tax return or use software to dot tax return. They simply dont trust themselves to try to do it on their own. And when they call the irs, theyre likely to get the wrong answer. Gerri well, thats unbelievable. You call the irs and they cant tell you what their own code means. Its crazy. Heres what they say. They say youre wrong, its because we had to get rid of the people. We had a smaller budget. People are fighting cyber crime. We had to san diego bunch of teem people to the division. If you want your questions answered. Sorry youre out of luck. A lot of downsizing happened because they had so much Electronic Filing they didnt need all the people to do data entry. They could have put some of the people on the phone. Again, part of the problem is the people arent trained well enough. The tax code is too complicated and youre likely to get a wrong answer. They could have taken people hounding Tea Party Groups and put them on the phone. Even that wouldnt have helped a the the end of the day. [laughter] gerri right. Theres a lot of people doing that apparently. In 2004, the whole time 2. 6 millions. This year its up to 18 minutes for the hold time. Youre waiting twenty minutes, half hour for somebody to come on the line and maybe tell you the wrong thing. Where should people go if they have questions. Is the irs the right place to go . No. I think sadly your best solution is to pay someone else to do your tax returns or use professional software. Theyve probably got it right, and youre less likely to get an audit when you do that rather than doing it on your own. Gerri okay. Scott, thank you for that. I appreciate your time. You bet, gerri. We want to know what you think. Are the problems at the irs the fault of cut back or incompetence. Log on to gerriwillis. Com. Vote on the righthanddside of the screen. Ill share the result at the end of the show. Customer service, which we were just talking about with the irs, its not the only part of the irs not passing muster. Take a look at what happens to your tax return once you file it. Makes a big difference if you file by mail. Hard paper; right . Or if you file electronically. If you file by mail, paper, once the irs gets it, it goes in to what the agency calls the pipeline. It has to be routed to the right department, that can take a day, after that the returns are opened and separated in to two sections. One with payments and one without. If it has a check attached, the irs likes to deposit it right away. Get their money, usually within 24hours. After that returns sorted by irs employees. Now, if you file electronically your return skips the whole process. Im about to describe. Next, tax examers check for errors in assign code to help with data entry. The irs has a quarter of all returns have some sort of mistake. And about 1 in 100 require more info from the taxpayer. Theyre not complete. Your paper return now joins the e file return for the next set of examers look out for fraud and random sample, my friends, is taken for audit. It could be you. If the computer cant read a paper return, and irs employee enters it manually. You can imagine how long that takes. Four or five days. Once all the returns are computerized. The irs can process your return, check exemptions, credit, deductions all of that stuff. If everything is good, it takes about 21 days after that to get your refund. In f you file by mail. One or two days if you file electronically. All in all, it takes at least six to eight weeks from the time the irs gets that paper return to the time you get your refund. If you e file and have district depositive it. You get the refund in as little as 10 days. Moral of the story, e file, my friends. Much faster. On to a different story. You saw the pictures; right . Royal caribbean now saying theyre offering 50 refunds to passengers aboard the cruise ship nearly 700 passengers and crew fell ill. Ship arrived in new jersey yet where its getting a cleaning before heading out to sea with new passengers. But just how clean are the cruise ships . Joining me now katie hill. Welcome to the show. Funk for having me. Here is what im wondering. Do you think they have done a good job of handling the people at the company, and the complaints as well . A decent job. They sanitized the ship now three times. Theyve ddne a decent job. If youre on the ship, youre one of the 700 people that are sick. You are not pleased. Theyre give people a future credit. Beware you have to use it within a year. Gerri wow. And talking about complaints. Apparently one person said it was their best cruise ever because they lost five pounds. [laughter] thats amazing. Gerri right . I know the people are very upset about this. Now they are getting back in to new york right in time for the super bowl. Its a totally a big mess. Passengers are going to be compensated, as you said 50 refund, 50 future credit. Is it enough . I dont think so. If you have been that sick literally trapped on a ship can you imagine . I cant deal. But, i mean, it is something and they did try to do their best with sanitizing the ship. They did it three times. Cbc is on board. For goodnesses sake. They have to get on there. If its the narrow virus. Its the big. Its worth repeating. The biggest outbreak in 20 years. We want to talk about how clean are the ships. People are wondering if its a petri dish. Were not talking about getting the flu. Were talled about clog drains and the bugs. The discrepancies i description are horrifying. How are clean . Some are cleaners are others. I looked through ten years of cbc data. They dot inspection and i looked through ten years. There are certain ships have never failed an inspection. Most major cruiselines have failed the cbc sanitation inspection. Gerri lets go there first. Lets talk about the ones that failed. Holland america, silver sea, roadway gent, carnival, Royal Caribbean, princess, it seems to me that just everybody has been on the list. Yeah. They usually only failed one ship one time. Theyre not major fails only 27 ships in the past three years failed its out of 900 inspections. Gerri what is the typically thing failing on . Food left out. The the pool and reservice . Thats for you to eat. And they leave it out. Not chilled enough. The pool and the spa is a big thing. Sometime its not quite clean enough. You name it. They have failed it. You can still have a lot of the violations and still pass it. Lets gerri lets talk about most cruise lines. These are the guys doing. Nor wee again, disney is on in. Talk about it. Costa at 37 of the time they got a perfect score. Thats the best one. Its the cleanest in term of, you know, getting perfect score. Nor wee began was great. They were inspected a lot. 28 of the time they got a perfect score. These are clean. Disney parents will be happy about that. And the two luxury lines crystal and sea born too. Those are luxury rains. You see the big red boat. If you fail what happens . You have remedy what happened. So you cannot get your passengers cant go on if you fail and you have to clean it up. If you left the food out. They make you clean it up. I heard the Royal Caribbean ship is turning around and going out. On friday. Its supposed to it is going back out. 24 hours no one could enter the ship. Allegedly its going back on friday. Well fee it happens. It leaves from new jersey right, you know. Disbeliever thats frightening. What is your rights to people who are concerned. Is it something you should be checking before you sail . The viruses are impossible check. They break out and usually come someone brought it on the ship. But youre on the ship all together. And youre sort of like uhoh. And the virus spread quickly. Theres nothing you can do. The they are general clean you can feel pretty good. You still terrific. Gerri were hearing princess cruise has a ship with viruses ton. The story breaking i believe now. I havent heard. Its not surprising. The viruses break out decently frequently. I think there was maybe 150 outbreaks last year. Theyre usually smaller. The Royal Caribbean the biggest one in 20 years. Gerri you said that before. You were saying you cant predict where the viruses will be. I hear the industry blame the passengers. Beyond that. Theres viruses that is one thing. But cleanly conditions on the ship as it is maintained. What should people do to make sure that is in order . You can go on the cbc website and look at what ships have passed and read the sanitation report. Thats what i recommend doing. Go on there the vessel sanitation. Go on there and see if they passed in the past. Some fail, some have violations that even though they passed are like, nope. [laughter] no thanks. Gerri we are on the same page. Cbc. Gov . Yep. Thank you, katie. We have more to come this hour including a warning about a new cell phone scam. You wont believe this. Nobodys sake. Not even me, months after the hack retailers remember im now getting word some of my information may have been comprised at neimanmarcus. Well have the latest. Gerri here we go again yahoo tonight said it detected mass hack attempts on the email accounts using malicious computer software. This as knew details emerge from the data breaches impacting retail giants target and neimanmarcus. Here with more the ceo and cofounder of crowd strike. Welcome back to the show. Its great to have you with us. What do you make about the news about yahoo . Well, it happens all the time. Of course, we have seen the retailers get hacked. Remember back in 2010 we had google getting hacked as well. The Internet Service providers, email providers are constant attack by nation states and criminal groups attempting to penetrate the system and get valuable information. Gerri i heard last night that these Retail Stores that the bad guys go online to buy some of the software on are so sophisticated really so main stream that they have Customer Service departments. What is it like . Absolutely they do. They are providing a service just like anyone else. They provide a service to criminals. They have to provide a Service Level agreement on response times. They have to make sure that the information theyre selling, in this case phone and credit card information is going to be valuable to the ultimate purchaser. So youre not going have the credit cards being shut down too frequently. And they get reputation ratings. The more receipt put a you are the higher prices you charge. Gerri wow. Are nay on the Old Fashioned internet or somewhere else . They have their own website and forrum they set up. Obviously they are closed. You have to get an invitation to be allowed to the community. You cant just go on any website and look it up. But once youre in, you have access to tremendous amount of information stolen credit cards, stolen identity. You can buy a passport on some of those forrums. Gerri unbelievable. Okay. So as you know, target, i believe, yesterday said we think we were the victim. Somebody hacking in to a venders password and profile to get on to our website. It sounds to me a little bit like theyre kind of trying to toss the blame on to somebody else. What do you make of their explanation of what happened. Its not our fault, they said, its the fault of a vendor. Its pretty common snare row these days. At network of a lot of these companies are interrelated. You rely on the hr processing to dot sales, accounting information. So you often have these situations where third party venn vendor can get comprised. We have seen it happen before, and its not surprising this may have happened at target. Neimanmarcus is out. I opened my mailbox, found a letter from neimanmarcus. They told me i might be one of these people. I shopped there exactly one time last year. Thats to buy a present for my husband and guess what . I can be in trouble a hacker could have my personal information. Let me show you what the letter said. We have copied it here so you can see it. Social security numbers and birth dates were not comprised. Customers that shopped online dont appear to be impacted. We have taken and continue to take number of steps to contain the situation. They then go on to promise you a years worth of Identity Theft protection. All kinds of efforts to try to keep you safe. Thats, of course, after the fact. After youve been broke anyone to. What do you make of their effort to control those problem . Because let me tell you, the thieves were on in neimanmarcus long before they were on target. Well, i can tell you gere i are, its the tip of the iceberg. We have target and neimanmarcus. We have michaels announce theyve been hit. At this point every american with a credit card or debit card should be vigilant looking through the account and statement to make sure there are no fraudulent charges on it. Unfortunately youre not alone. Tens of millions of americans are in the same boat. And you should absolutely take them on and sign on for credit monitoring and other services you get for free. You are certainly at risk for Identity Theft now. Gerri oh, boy. You mention there had are other retailers out there. Can you give us any clues who they might be . Were working with a number of them to make sure theyre not breached. Were under considerablety rules. Expect more retailers to come forward. Its not the end of it. Gerri thank you for coming on the sew. Great to see you. Thank you very much. Well, everybody is getting attacked. Time for the stories youre clicking on tonight on foxbusiness. Com. Stocks finally closing higher today after getting hit yesterday. Investor shared a report that the u. S. Economy grew at the quick clip. 3. 2 in the fourth quarter. And facebook rock rocketed to new highs after stronger than expected earnings. More than half of the advertising revenue now comes from mobile. Shares jumped around 14 to 61 a share. Prosecutors are asking a judge to order bank of america to pay more than 2 billion in penalties for selling bad home loans to fannie and fred any mack. They want them to pay based on total revenue not just profit. Bank of america said the fine is too high. The feds have seen more than 21. 5 worth of fake super bowl paper. Most of the knockoffs were manufactured overseas and shipped to the u. S. A. Once the team were announced. Authorities say the counterfeit are poor quality and drive up the price of the legitimate items. Those are the hot stories on foxbusiness. Com. We have more coming. Evidence the warning of doctor shortages may be coming true. Next, a consumer alert, how crooks are tricking you in to calling them with a new scram. Dont go away gerri who is calling you . One ring to your cell phone cost cost you. Details of a new sc the whole idea is to get you to call back because if you call back it is a Pay Per Call Service so if you call back, you will be charged 20 for the call, 10 per minute. So this is a big scam that is back. The 900 numbers are if you call in 900 number you get a fee. In the United States a lot of 900 numbers went away and regulation came in saying it had to alert you you have to hang up or you will be charged x amount per minute. These are coming from international waters, mostly from the caribbean. Caribbean. Gerri if you wait, it is 9 per minute. Reality is people will get their bill and wont even Pay Attention to it. They dont realize it, they pay the bill and the scammers get away with it. Instead if they pick up the phone and tell the carrier what happened, most likely they will take it off the bill, reported and the carrier can block a certain number coming in from their switch. The problem is, this is so fast moving and international, so it is hard to track. Gerri you say most of it is coming from the caribbean. I will not know until i get my bill that i know it is a scam. Do they really take charges off your bill . Most will if you call right away and call as soon as you get your bill. Most importantly by watching the show right now, you need to be alert these calls are coming from the caribbean. You will see certain areas where they are coming from. I got a call last week, the best thing is to go ahead and use your favorite Search Engine and use the number in the Search Engine you got a call from them, there are usually other people that have reported it saying dont pick up the phone, i was charged, using our Search Engine is the best way for any number. Gerri do you know what the area codes are to watch out for . 809, 284. Gerri is it just a group of people to watch for in the caribbean doing this . It is like in organized Crime Syndicate doing it. They have legitimate businesses, you cant be a 900 number business, but they are not using the law of the u. S. And it is getting through. People are calling these numbers because you think it is a local number. Gerri great point. Thank you for coming on tonight, great stuff. Those area codes to watch out for, 809, 284. You ca