Comptroller urges more staff and IT funding as call volume and compliance work rise
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Summary
The comptroller told the Budget and Taxation Committee the office needs additional PINs and technology investments to handle higher call volumes, rebuild audit capacity and implement new compliance tools; senators raised concerns about audit practices affecting elderly constituents.
Annapolis — Comptroller staff asked the Budget and Taxation Committee for more personnel and technology funding to scale up customer service and compliance work after a recent surge in demand.
"We need more people to answer the phones. We need more people to be in our offices. We need more people to work CRM cases," the comptroller said, describing a spike in contacts and noting the office's new CRM and virtual branch appointments. The office reported more than 2.4 million calls between January and September 2025, up from about 1.7 million in the same period the prior year, and said improvements in call tracking make current counts more accurate.
The comptroller said the office has begun rebuilding its compliance division after COVID, citing prior understaffing: the office found one compliance auditor per roughly 22,710 residents versus about one per 12,000 in peer states. The office said FY25 investments included 28 new PINs and $3.9 million for IT, which the comptroller said are already producing returns; staff estimated more than $50 million in returns over the coming fiscal years and said FY25 ROI targets were exceeded.
Comptroller staff outlined several modernization projects now in operation or planned: a digital‑discovery pilot to identify unreported income from public digital content, a remote sellers project that sent approximately 3,800 letters in 2025 and registered 222 previously unregistered vendors (collecting nearly $1 million in sales and use taxes), and a proposed $500,000 intelligent mail‑barcoding effort to reduce undeliverable mail and improve address information.
Committee members pressed the comptroller on constituent service problems tied to limited phone capacity and to the content of audit practices. One senator recounted audits of elderly "hometown heroes" retirees and described a case in which an auditor asked a 91‑year‑old former officer to remove a uniform patch as evidence. The comptroller called the account "horrible," apologized, and said staff would pull the case and investigate to determine whether staff actions fell outside normal practice.
The comptroller also said the office is planning to integrate AI tools and call‑center models after the planned August transition to a new personal‑tax system, and that additional staff would be assigned to virtual appointment capacity if approved.
The briefing included requests for another 25 PINs for customer service building and three PINs for tax attorneys, plus funding for cybersecurity, fraud detection and analytics. The items were presented for the committee's information; no formal vote took place at the meeting.
