An official website of the U.S. Gov An official website of the U.S. GovThe National Taxpayer Advocate’s Annual Report to Congress identifies taxpayers’ problems and provides suggestions to further protect taxpayer rights and ease taxpayer burden
The National Taxpayer Advocate is releasing the National Taxpayer Advocate 2025 Purple Book. In it, she presents a concise summary of legislative recommendations that she believes will strengthen taxpayer rights and improve tax administration. Most of the recommendations have been made in detail in prior reports, but others are presented in this book for the first time. She believes that most of the recommendations presented in this volume are non-controversial, common sense reforms that the tax-writing committees and other Members of Congress may find useful.
Preface
Section 7803(c)(2)(B)(ii) of the Internal Revenue Code requires the National Taxpayer Advocate to submit this report each year and in it, among other things, to identify the ten most serious problems encountered by taxpayers and make administrative and legislative recommendations to mitigate those problems. In each of the ten Most Serious Problem discussions in this report, we are including an IRS narrative response. Our intent is to help readers see both TAS’s perspective and the IRS’s perspective on the source and nature of key challenges and potential solutions.
The Taxpayer Advocate Service (TAS) is an independent organization within the IRS. Led by the National Taxpayer Advocate, TAS is your voice at the IRS.
The National Taxpayer Advocate’s Annual Report to Congress creates a dialogue at the highest levels of government to address taxpayers’ problems, protect taxpayers’ rights, and ease taxpayers’ burden. Some of the problems discussed in this report were first identified when taxpayers came to TAS for help in resolving problems with the IRS.
The National Taxpayer Advocate delivers this report directly to the tax-writing committees in Congress (the House Committee on Ways and Means and the Senate Committee on Finance), with no prior review by the IRS Commissioner, the Secretary of the Treasury, or the Office of Management and Budget.
WASHINGTON — National Taxpayer Advocate Erin M. Collins today released her Fiscal Year 2026 Objectives Report to Congress, highlighting a largely successful 2025 filing season while raising concerns about persistent refund delays for victims of identity theft, delays in processing Employee Retention Credit claims, and critical challenges facing taxpayers and the IRS as the agency prepares for the 2026 filing season. The report also outlines the Advocate’s priority recommendations as the IRS continues to modernize its technology systems in the coming years.
2022 Objectives Report to Congress (JRC). Each year’s ARC identifies the 10 most serious problems facing taxpayers and recommends how to fix them.
