IRS could be required to publicly report wait times and backlogs

A bipartisan bill focused on improving customer service at the IRS is headed for a full Senate vote. 

The Senate Finance Committee advanced the Taxpayer Assistance and Service Act in a 26-1 vote during a Thursday markup hearing. The bill contains over 60 IRS reforms proposed by Republicans and Democrats on the committee and the agency’s National Taxpayer Advocate. 

IRS leadership touted the agency’s performance during this year's filing season, despite the agency shedding more than a quarter of its employees. Agency watchdogs, however, have raised concerns with the agency’s level of responsiveness to taxpayers. 

Committee Chairman Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, said some provisions in the bill would “slash wait times” for Americans who may otherwise “spend an afternoon on hold” with the IRS. 

“This bipartisan bill modernizes and streamlines IRS operations, strengthens taxpayer rights, and delivers a more taxpayer-first system,” Crapo said. “It reflects years of bipartisan efforts to translate stories of casework frustrations and tangible fixes designed to make the IRS work more efficiently for the American people.” 

Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said many of the bill’s provisions “will help ensure that refunds get out the door on time.” 

“They're going to improve customer service. They're going to make it easier for taxpayers to get help during filing season,” Wyden said. 

The bill would require the IRS to create a public dashboard on its website featuring metrics on its call volume, backlogs, wait times and the availability of callbacks. It would require the IRS to offer a callback option for all of its phone lines by 2028 whenever calls are not answered within five minutes. 

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., who included these provisions, said the bill would provide added transparency whenever the IRS falls behind on processing returns or correspondence, “eliminating guessing games for taxpayers wondering why their refunds haven't arrived.” 

IRS Chief Executive Officer Frank Bisignano told IRS employees just before the start of the filing season that the agency would adopt new customer service metrics, scrapping its level-of-service phone metric that had been in use for about 20 years. 

The IRS shed about 27% of its workforce last year largely through voluntary separation incentives. Bisignano told lawmakers in April that the agency saw its “most successful filing season in IRS history,” demonstrating that the IRS can have both “less people and better results.”

National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins, in a report to Congress submitted last month, wrote that “for most taxpayers, the filing season went smoothly,” but that for millions of taxpayers requiring assistance, the filing season was “frustrating, confusing, and financially disruptive.” 

Collins wrote that taxpayers in some cases could not reach an IRS employee over the phone despite multiple calls, and taxpayers whose returns were erroneously flagged by identity theft filters had to wait weeks or months to receive their tax refunds. 

“With fewer employees and even fewer experienced employees, personal service was harder to come by. That translated to longer waits for assistance, fewer experienced employees available to work on complex account issues, delayed responses to correspondence and, as a result, longer case resolution times,” she  wrote. 

The bill would require the IRS to accept and process all returns electronically, and to digitize returns and taxpayer correspondence. 

The agency, through its Zero Paper Initiative, is trying to digitize incoming paper tax returns and correspondence to reduce processing times.  As of December 2025, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration found that four contractors hired by the IRS to digitize paper tax returns processed about 379,000 of the agency’s 10.7 million paper returns — about 4% of its inventory.

The bill would also take steps to ensure the IRS pays whistleblowers more quickly. The IRS Whistleblower Office, since 2007, has helped the agency recover nearly $8 billion in taxes owed. Whistleblowers are entitled to a portion of the funds the IRS recovers, but they typically wait for more than decade to get paid. 

The bill requires the IRS to pay interest on delayed whistleblower awards. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said these reforms “will lead to even greater collections moving forward.”

Several lawmakers raised concerns that the bill doesn’t do anything to address the agency’s widespread staffing losses. 

Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., said the bill doesn’t do anything to address the agency’s staffing losses or a growing “tax gap” between what taxpayers owe and what the IRS is able to collect. 

“Making sure that the IRS is funded and staffed is essential to having a fair system,” said Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash. “We look at the cuts that came through earlier this year. It means we're eliminating trained and experienced revenue agents who can audit and do complex returns.” 

The Yale Budget Lab estimated that last year’s staffing cuts resulted a $861 billion decrease in revenue collected by the IRS.

“Those cuts won't produce savings. They just actually cost money," Cantwell said.