During the 2025 tax filing season, more than one-quarter of IRS phone calls failed to meet quality standards, according to a new report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA). Out of 200 monitored calls, 52 had critical shortcomings — a failure rate TIGTA says affected approximately 1 million taxpayers who contacted major IRS telephone lines. The findings come as a bipartisan Senate bill designed to fix taxpayer service problems sits stalled due to an unrelated political controversy.
TIGTA examined calls made to IRS Compliance Services and Accounts Management telephone lines during the four months surrounding tax day, when the agency received 3.8 million calls total. The problems were particularly severe on Accounts Management lines, where TIGTA estimated that 34% of taxpayers did not receive quality service, compared to 18% on Compliance Services lines. Dropped or disconnected calls accounted for nearly half of all failures, and the IRS doesn't require representatives to document when and why calls are dropped. Excessive hold times were the second most common problem — 10% of reviewed calls exceeded the seven-minute threshold that IRS representatives are trained not to cross. Other failures included inaccurate or incomplete answers and discourteous treatment.
The report finds that taxpayers who receive incorrect guidance may face additional delays, compliance challenges, or unnecessary costs when trying to resolve their tax issues. According to the National Taxpayers Union Foundation, which highlighted similar weaknesses in 2024, the problems include "inconsistent assistance, difficulty reaching representatives, and challenges navigating Service systems." TIGTA is the independent watchdog responsible for overseeing IRS operations and identifying waste, fraud, abuse, and service deficiencies.
Poor taxpayer service creates a ripple effect that undermines the entire tax system. When taxpayers can't get reliable assistance, they're more likely to make mistakes, miss deadlines, distrust notices, give up trying to resolve a problem correctly, or disengage from the system altogether. The report notes that quality taxpayer services improve compliance with the tax system, and that these failures are "bad for taxpayers, bad for tax administration, and ultimately bad for voluntary compliance." Taxpayers are expected to understand and comply with a very complicated tax code, and many people contact the IRS simply to make sure they're filing correctly and complying with the law so they can avoid audit notices, penalties, or other problems down the road.
The bipartisan Taxpayer Assistance and Service Act, sponsored by Senators Mike Crapo and Ron Wyden, would address many of these persistent problems. The legislation includes 23 reforms recommended by NTU or NTU Foundation and would require better online tools, improved refund tracking, and a customer service dashboard to give taxpayers more information about call wait times and service availability. It would also strengthen communication between taxpayers and the IRS by making it easier to track the status of inquiries, receive timely updates, and resolve issues without repeatedly contacting the Service. A hearing on the bill that was expected in mid-June has been indefinitely delayed due to a political dispute regarding an unrelated IRS issue. With the IRS answering tens of millions of taxpayer calls each year, Congress can't afford to put service reforms on the back burner.