A mostly smooth filing season, with familiar cracks: the taxpayer advocate's mid-year report

National Taxpayer Advocate Erin M. Collins delivered her Fiscal Year 2027 Objectives Report to Congress on June 24, and the top line is genuinely good news. Despite sweeping tax law changes, a smaller workforce and turnover at the top, the IRS processed nearly 139 million individual returns and pushed out more than 90 million refunds during the 2026 filing season. 

What went right

For most clients, the system did what it was supposed to do. Roughly 98% of returns were filed electronically, and about 98% of refunds landed by direct deposit. Online accounts kept gaining ground too. Taxpayers signed in nearly 121 million times during the filing season to retrieve tax documents, upload responses to notices and track refund status. The "Where's My Refund?" tool got pinged about 346 million times, up 9% from last year. When the technology works, most taxpayers never need to call their tax preparer in a panic, and they never need to call the IRS at all.

The problem, as Collins puts it plainly, is that aggregate numbers don't tell every taxpayer's story. And the corners of the story that didn't make the headline are the corners where we live.

Where the cracks showed up

Starting with returns flagged for additional review, IRS processing filters suspended more than 14 million individual returns this season. Over 1 million of those taxpayers waited beyond the IRS's standard processing window to see their money, with delays averaging about five and a half weeks. For clients counting on a refund to cover rent, groceries or a medical bill, that's not a statistic. That's a hard month.

Identity theft cases tell an even harder story. Many still take close to two years to resolve.  Clients whose return gets hijacked this filing season may not see relief until well into 2028, and the emotional weight of that wait usually lands on tax professionals as much as the clients.

The phone problem nobody talks about

Phone service is the other place where the gap between the headline and reality opens up. On its Accounts Management lines, the IRS reported a 73% level of service with eight-minute average hold times. That sounds workable. But two of the agency's highest-volume phone lines sit outside Accounts Management, and the picture there is much rougher. On the Installment Agreement/Balance Due line, the IRS answered only 31% of roughly 3.4 million calls, and the taxpayers who did get through waited an average of 45 minutes. On the Taxpayer Protection Program line, where taxpayers verify identity after their returns get flagged, the agency answered just 19% of about 2.4 million calls, with 20-minute average waits. In other words, the clients who need IRS help the most are the ones least likely to reach a person.

What to tell clients now

Set expectations earlier than usual. If a client's return is pulled for review, the wait can stretch weeks past normal processing. Tell them up front, especially the ones who budget around their refund. For identity theft clients, prepare them for a long road. Keep Form 14039, Identity Theft Affidavit, in your back pocket, document every contact and follow up regularly. Push clients toward Individual Online Accounts whenever you can and use the online payment agreement option for installment setups rather than the call queue.

A balanced picture

Filing season success isn't only about how many returns clear the door. It's about how the system treats people when something goes wrong. The Taxpayer Advocate Service (TAS) exists under §7803(c) of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) to make sure those people aren't invisible. As tax professionals, we sit right alongside it, and our clients count on us to walk them through every part of the story, not just the headline.