IRS answered more practitioner calls during 2025 busy season, yet worry looms

Some good news, and some existential chaos.

57% of AICPA members got questions answered speedily by the IRS Practitioner Priority Service hotline during the 2025 busy season, up from 37% in 2024, according to an AICPA annual survey.

But 14% of members said they rarely or never got answers right away this tax season, down from 37% in 2024.

Melanie Lauridsen, the AICPA’s VP of tax policy and advocacy, called the IRS hotline “one of the most important things for tax people because, when we have a question, usually the IRS is the only one that can answer it,” at a recent AICPA town hall, the Journal of Accountancy reported. “What we see is the IRS did answer the phone, and there was improvement there.”

But the survey also reflected concerns about the state of the IRS during Trump 2.0, which has already meant steep staffing cuts and leadership turnover.

In the AICPA survey, 70% of members said they were concerned that political distractions would impact IRS funding, a sharp jump from 22% in 2024. 63% said they feared IRS processing delays, up from 27% last year, while 34% expressed concern about “a lack of clarity or guidance from the IRS,” versus 17% of members who said the same in 2024.

A contradictory blip: 30% of survey respondents said they were satisfied with overall service from the IRS, around the same percentage as 2024.

“What’s interesting with this year is the IRS services have pretty much flat-lined, which that’s not a good or a bad thing, especially in this environment, so we are getting consistent service to the prior year,” Lauridsen said. “But when you look at the big picture, we’re not at pre-Covid levels.”