Title: IRS's Efforts to Improve Customer Service and the Taxpayer
Experience

Description: The IRS has a long-standing goal of improving its taxpayer
services and experiences. But many Americans still struggle to connect
with the IRS or report having a bad experience when they do. What is the
IRS doing to improve the taxpayers' experience? We'll learn more from
GAO's Jessica Lucas-Judy.

Related work: GAO-25-107408, Taxpayer Experience: IRS Should Fully
Establish Its Approach for Using Evidence to Assess Service Improvement
Results

Released: July 2025

{Music}

[Jessica Lucas-Judy:] A lot of IRS's focus more recently has been on
taxpayer service or customer service. But the taxpayer experience needs
to look from the whole journey.

[Holly Hobbs:] Hi, and welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for
fact-based, nonpartisan news and information from the U.S. Government
Accountability Office. I'm your host, Holly Hobbs. 

If you filed your taxes this year, you may have visited the IRS's
website, called the toll-free helpline, or used some of IRS's other
tools to help you fill out tax forms. The IRS has a long-standing goal
of improving its taxpayer services and experiences. But many Americans
still struggle to connect with the IRS or report having a bad experience
when they do. So what is the IRS doing to improve the taxpayers'
experience? We'll learn more about these efforts from GAO's Jessica
Lucas-Judy, who has a new report out on this issue. Thanks for joining
us.

[Jessica Lucas-Judy:] Thanks for having me.

[Holly Hobbs:] Jessica, maybe we can start with what's wrong with IRS's
efforts right now?

[Jessica Lucas-Judy:] Well, so it's not so much that something's wrong
with it. Most people when they're interacting with the IRS, it's very
easy. You just file your taxes and you either get a refund or make a
payment. And it's done pretty quickly. But IRS has had these
long-standing challenges for doing things like answering the phones, not
having taxpayers waiting online for a long period of time, balancing the
phones and the correspondence--the mail essentially, processing returns
when there are errors or identity theft or returns that are filed on
paper, and really just dealing with modernizing its technology and its
infrastructure. 

They've also had difficulty in recruiting and retaining staff. And a lot
of IRS's focus more recently has been on taxpayer service or customer
service. So the individual transactions and that's really from the
agency's perspective. But the taxpayer experience needs to look from the
whole journey, the whole interaction that a taxpayer has. And that might
be in-person, it might be online, it might be through their online
account. And that's really where IRS needs to be focusing more.

[Holly Hobbs:] So IRS knows that the taxpayers are looking for an
improved experience. What all are they doing to improve it?

[Jessica Lucas-Judy:] They've had a number of different efforts underway
here. They got tens of billions of dollars in additional funding several
years ago through the Inflation Reduction Act. And they outlined a
strategic vision for the future for what they wanted the taxpayer
experience and the IRS experience to be, had a strategic operating plan
that had goals, including things like making it easier for taxpayers to
meet their tax obligations and to get the tax incentives that they're
eligible for, and to be able to resolve issues, any issues that arise
quickly. 

They put together more than 100 different projects to try to help
achieve this. And these included things like improving the IRS website,
making enhancements to online accounts, as well as providing better
equipment and better technology for the customer service representatives
to be able to help taxpayers.

[Holly Hobbs:] So we talked to some taxpayer advocacy groups. What did
they tell us about these efforts so far? What do they think?

[Jessica Lucas-Judy:] Yeah. So we talked to ten different groups that
represent different kinds of taxpayers and tax professionals. This
included the National Taxpayers Union, the Taxpayer Advocate, the
National Association of Enrolled Agents. And they outlined for us
different taxpayer wants and needs. These included things like sort of
what you would expect, right. Secure and easy online tools and then an
easy to interact with website, clear and timely guidance from the IRS
about how to interact or how to pay their taxes, sufficient staff to be
able to answer phone calls and respond to correspondence timely, and the
opportunity for taxpayers to be able to engage with the IRS when IRS is
making these improvements and learning what it is that taxpayers need.

[Holly Hobbs:] So they're monitoring what IRS is doing. But what about
IRS itself? How is it monitoring to see whether its efforts are working? 

[Jessica Lucas-Judy:] So one of the things that we looked at, IRS had
this outline for its future vision that included these goals and more
than 100 projects. They put together an oversight body or structure to
help them implement these changes--including designating executives to
have accountability for the different projects that were going on. They
had a taxpayer experience office that was designed to help the different
parts of the IRS to be able to consider the taxpayer experience. And
they also had a transformation strategy office that was responsible for
the implementation of the strategic operating plan. And they started
mapping out the different journeys that taxpayers go through. You know,
I was talking about the difference between the customer service and the
taxpayer experience. Part of that is understanding: how do people
experience? What kind of journey do they go on? when they're interacting
with the IRS, and then developing different measures. And a lot of the
measures that they put in place at first were about timeliness and the
implementation of the projects--kinds of things that you would expect,
but where they were moving towards and where we were encouraging them to
go is to have measures to know how they were affecting the actual
taxpayer experience and were the things that they were doing the right
things? Were they actually helping taxpayers to have a better
experience?

[Holly Hobbs:] Every year we look at this issue, and a couple of years
ago, IRS received all this money to help improve the taxpayer
experience. And then more recently, it lost some of that funding. Do we
know if that's going to have an impact on any of its efforts?

[Jessica Lucas-Judy:] Certainly it's going to have an impact. The
question is how much and what's the future going to look like? The
funding level is uncertain, but IRS did still have tens of billions of
additional dollars, even with the precisions that are there. They had
just been bringing on more staff to try to be able to do things like
answer the phones more quickly, respond to correspondence. And they're
facing staff reductions, they're reorganizations that are happening, and
the technology challenges that we talked about, those are still there.
And so, it's uncertain what the future is going to hold.

[Holly Hobbs:] So among its efforts, Direct File was this new initiative
by IRS that allowed taxpayers to file taxes online for free--as opposed
to paying for a service. It's being piloted in some states. What's going
to happen with Direct File? 

[Jessica Lucas-Judy:] That also remains to be seen.

{MUSIC}

[Holly Hobbs:] So Jessica just told us that the IRS has taken steps to
improve its customer service and taxpayer experience. But, even so,
taxpayer advocacy groups told us there is more IRS could do to improve
its efforts.

So, Jessica, given that, what more do we think the IRS should be doing?

[Jessica Lucas-Judy:] Yeah. So, some of the things that they put in
place, even though it's uncertain what's going to happen, it looks like
some of these are still in progress. So, implementing more callback
options so people can receive a call instead of having to wait on hold.
Chat bots. Digital upload tools so that you can send information right
away instead of having to send it through the mail. Redesigning notices
to make them easier for taxpayers to understand. Expanding the
electronic filing options. All of those, it seems like, are still going
on. Some of the things that we think would be helpful for the IRS is to
implement some of the key practices that GAO has identified for using
evidence to be able to make decisions. So, these include things like
defining goals that are specific to improving the taxpayer experience
and making it really explicit what the connection is between a
particular project or an initiative and its intended outcome.
Identifying and using evidence for assessing each of those different
projects and goals. And then also involving stakeholders, such as those
representing taxpayers. And Direct File was a great example of that,
where IRS was standing up this ability for taxpayers to file directly
for free online with the IRS, and they rolled that out slowly and
involved lots of different groups of taxpayers in testing so that they
could make changes as they were going. And then also promoting
accountability and making sure that there's someone who's responsible
for specifically the taxpayer experience for monitoring that, and
they're held accountable for achieving the results.

[Holly Hobbs:] And last question, what's the bottom line of this report?

[Jessica Lucas-Judy:] So bottom line, IRS has been making a lot of
really good progress over the last couple of years. This new opportunity
now with new leadership and new structure, it'll be important for the
administration to be able to set out a vision for helping taxpayers and
for IRS to use evidence in making decisions, holding officials
accountable for achieving results. And this will help make the best use
of IRS's resources.

[Holly Hobbs:] That was Jessica Lucas-Judy, talking about our new report
on the IRS. Thanks for your time.

[Jessica Lucas-Judy:] Thank you, Holly.

[Holly Hobbs:] And thank you for listening to the Watchdog Report. To
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