Lawmakers are calling on Treasury Secretary and acting IRS Commissioner Scott Bessent to ramp up IRS and Taxpayer Advocate Service (TAS) hiring before the 2026 filing season. They warn that continuing the hiring freeze put in place early this year will interfere with timely return processing and taxpayer services.
In a December 21 letter, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and 16 other senators ask Bessent and Chief of Taxpayer Services Ken Corbin about the IRS’ plans for the upcoming filing season. In particular, the lawmakers seek details on whether the agency will hire the 3,500 additional employees needed to achieve an 85% telephone level-of-service, per a recent Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) report.
The lawmakers also request information on “the terms of the hiring freezes currently in place” and “factors” needed to lift the freezes. The IRS froze hiring under a January 2025 presidential memorandum, which provides for an end when “the Secretary of the Treasury … determines that it is in the national interest to lift the freeze.”
Warren and her colleagues also push Bessent and Corbin on whether – in light of the changes to tax law under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB) and IRS staffing losses – the 2026 filing season is still expected to begin “on time.” According to TIGTA, “[k]ey IRS functions responsible for managing the filing season have lost 17 to 19 percent of their workforce.”
TIGTA notes that Trump administration staffing reductions had “no significant impact on the 2025 Filing Season” because critical positions were exempted until the season concluded. However, with reduced staffing in place, along with updates needed to “dozens of federal tax forms” after the OBBB, the lawmakers are concerned about the upcoming filing season. They ask for a response and staff-level briefing about 2026 filing season preparations by January 12.
Days earlier, an overlapping group of 24 senators raised concerns specifically about TAS. The December 18 letter, headed up by Senator Raphael Warnock (D-GA), recounts executive actions earlier this year that diminished the IRS and TAS workforce. Those include the federal workforce hiring freeze put in place on Inauguration Day, the deferred resignation program, and other “efforts to reduce the federal workforce.” The result, say the lawmakers, is that “nearly one in four” TAS advocates have left the service.
The lawmakers push Bessent for details on how he will determine it is in the “national interest” to end the hiring freeze. They contend that “ensuring Americans can access their full tax benefits in a timely manner falls squarely within the ‘national interest.'” Warnock gives Bessent until January 23 to provide details on TAS caseloads and backlogs – but asks for an immediate end to the freeze.
Tax practitioners have long cautioned that continued staffing losses will impact taxpayer services. Rochelle Hodes, speaking at the AICPA National Tax Conference in November, explained that currently at TAS, taxpayers and practitioners “can’t find the people to who have the ability to do what needs to be done – or if they find them, their case loads are ginormous.” To Hodes, a principal at Crowe whose past experience includes work at the IRS Office of Chief Counsel and Treasury Office of Tax Policy, that’s “completely unacceptable.”
And even if the freeze is lifted, filling IRS and TAS positions may not be easy. “The folks who go into TAS are, for a large part of TAS, recruited internally from the IRS,” Rodes explained. “They’re people who know different skills at the IRS.”
But even then, Rodes added, it takes time to get new TAS hires up to speed. They may come from a “narrow” tax background. In addition, “they may not understand the taxpayer experience necessarily on our side of the fence, because they’ve always been in the service.” She cited nuances in tax law, like IRC § 6511 on refund statute of limitations.
Beyond taxpayer service concerns, some experts are worried that reduced IRS staffing will lead to greater incidence of noncompliance. Earlier this year, the Yale Budget Lab analyzed the budget impacts of reduced IRS staffing, and found that in all scenarios, “gross foregone revenue” exceeded savings from layoffs and other staff losses. The group reasoned that staffing reductions “come with dramatic increases in noncompliance which would outstrip any budgetary savings several times over.”
And the Budget Lab predicts noncompliance will be greatest among higher earners, who “tend to accrue income in more opaque ways,” rather than wage-earners whose taxes are “automatically withheld.”
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