Congress wants your next filing season to be a breeze

This year, Congress voted to slash the IRS’s budget for fiscal 2026 by 9%, funding it at 40% of 2010’s level when adjusted for inflation. It also cut about two-thirds of the remaining money the Inflation Reduction Act had allotted to the IRS for technology upgrades.

Lawmakers in the House of Representatives also passed no fewer than 13 bills dealing with tax administration. Some of them, such as the Taxpayer Experience Improvement Act and the Barcode Efficiency Act, aim to make the IRS more efficient and easier for taxpayers to deal with.

Service oriented. But the potential law that finance professionals want to keep an eye on is the Taxpayer Assistance and Service (TAS) Act, a bipartisan bill introduced in the Senate by finance committee chair and Idaho Republican Mike Crapo and ranking member Ron Wyden, Democrat from Oregon. The sweeping piece of legislation includes 68 provisions that would mandate improvements in IRS service.

On the list: digitizing tax returns, updating the “Where’s My Refund?” function on the IRS’s website so taxpayers can know when refunds are arriving and what to do if they’re delayed, showing taxpayers wait times to talk to an agent, and introducing a callback option if taxpayer calls aren’t answered within five minutes.

The bill would also beef up standards for paid, non-credentialed tax preparers and increase penalties for malpractice. It would also permit the Tax Court to hear more refund cases, and make the Office of the National Taxpayer Advocate and the Office of Independent Appeals more autonomous.

Jessica Jeane, a director with Baker Tilly’s national tax practice, called the TAS Act “a very significant bill” in an interview with CFO Brew. It “would absolutely go a long way to modernizing the internal systems [of the IRS] as well as customer service and taxpayers’ access to certain information,” she said.

The act enjoys bipartisan support, Jeane said. The AICPA, the National Association of Tax Professionals, and other professional and taxpayers’ rights organizations have spoken up in favor of it. So has National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins, who said that the bill “would strengthen taxpayer rights, reduce taxpayer burden, and improve tax administration.” (About 40 of the TAS Act’s provisions are based on recommendations her office made.)

The TAS Act overlaps with some of the 12 other tax bills that the House has approved, Jeane said. The Senate “could certainly decide to reject the piecemeal approach and move forward with a broader consolidated approach, such as the TAS Act,” she added.

But even if the TAS Act doesn’t go through, Congress has an appetite for IRS reform, Jeane said. “I do think we will eventually see” measures like those in the TAS ACT “be successful, just because again, there’s such broad bipartisan support and industry backing.”

She advises finance and tax professionals to keep tabs on what happens in DC. “I always advocate for watching the space, because clients want to know, and have questions. You want to make sure that you’re prepared, you’re informed,” she said.