Two numbers came out of the same set of phone lines this filing season, and the IRS published only one of them. The agency’s own measure said 73 percent of calls routed to an assistor got answered. A federal auditor built a second measure that counted every dial tone, not just the calls the phone system decided to route onward, and it landed at 44 percent.
The formula behind the 44 percent figure
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), in its June 30, 2026 report Interim Results of the 2026 Filing Season, developed what it calls the Level of Access measure specifically because the IRS’s own telephone statistics only count calls that make it through the system’s initial routing. TIGTA’s version starts from the full pool: 11.7 million total dialed attempts to the IRS during open hours as of February 28, 2026. Of those, 3.2 million were answered by a live assistor and 1.9 million were resolved through an automated response. Add those two figures — 5.1 million — and divide by the 11.7 million attempts, and the result is 43.6 percent, which TIGTA rounds to 44 percent in its Figure 8 table.
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Why the IRS’s Assistor Service Rate reads so much higher
The IRS’s headline number for 2026, the Assistor Service Rate, came in at 73 percent — a new measure the agency introduced this filing season to replace the older Level of Service statistic, expanded to include contacts resolved through Live Chat. The gap between that 73 percent and TIGTA’s 44 percent is a matter of denominator: the Assistor Service Rate only counts calls that were already routed to an assistor queue, while TIGTA’s Level of Access counts every attempt to reach the IRS by phone at all, including callers who were blocked, disconnected, or never made it past an automated menu. Both figures describe the same 2026 filing season; they simply answer different questions about it.
The wait got three times longer for those who got through
For the callers TIGTA’s broader measure does count as successful, the experience still slowed considerably. The average speed of answer rose to 8.2 minutes in 2026 from 3.4 minutes in 2025, and the number of calls actually answered by a live assistor fell to 3.2 million from 4.5 million the year before — even though the IRS’s Accounts Management function had anticipated roughly 13.8 million calls for the season and, as of February 28, 2026, had received 1.3 million fewer calls than the same point in 2025. Accounts Management leadership told TIGTA it had not seen the telephone demand it had originally projected, but the drop in demand did not translate into a faster answer for the callers who did dial in.
A service goal cut from 85 percent to 70 percent
The IRS did not hold its telephone service to the prior year’s standard. Facing the same staffing shortfalls that thinned its Taxpayer Assistance Centers, the agency lowered its Assistor Service Rate goal to 70 percent for the 2026 filing season, down from an 85 percent Level of Service goal in 2025. Measured against that reduced bar, the IRS reports meeting its target through February 28, 2026. TIGTA’s Level of Access statistic was not compared against any goal in the report — it exists as an independent audit measure, not a target the IRS itself is being held to, which is why a 44 percent figure and a “goal met” conclusion can appear in the same report about the same phone lines.
The Live Chat option most callers could not use
Part of what separates the Assistor Service Rate from TIGTA’s Level of Access is Live Chat, a contact channel the IRS folded into its 2026 measure for the first time. In practice, that channel reached almost none of the callers behind either statistic: during the 2026 filing season, the IRS limited Live Chat in the Accounts Management function to questions from individual international taxpayers about amended returns and transcripts, a narrow slice of the calling public that excludes most domestic retirees with a refund or notice question. The IRS has said it plans to expand Live Chat access for the next filing season, but for 2026 its inclusion in the Assistor Service Rate added little real capacity to the phone system TIGTA measured.
What TIGTA is still watching
TIGTA’s report treats the telephone findings as provisional, part of a broader review it says will continue “through early May 2026,” with a final assessment of the full 2026 filing season due later in the year. The underlying strain the audit identified is a staffing one: the Accounts Management function, which answers the phones, had onboarded only 66 percent of its approved filing-season hires as of February 27, 2026. Until TIGTA’s follow-up report, the Level of Access figure in this June 30 interim report — 5.1 million connections out of 11.7 million attempts — is the most current independent count of how often a call to the IRS reached anyone at all.
Working an IRS Case Without Reaching a Person
With barely more than four in ten calls to the IRS connecting to a person or an automated response this filing season, a taxpayer with a refund question is often better served working the problem through paperwork and online tools than waiting on hold. Knowing which form actually moves a stalled case forward matters more when a phone call is not a reliable option.
The IRS Refund Recovery Kit is a 13-page kit with a notice decoder and the refund-trace steps built around Form 3911.
Read the notice decoder and the Form 3911 trace steps in The IRS Refund Recovery Kit.
This article was researched and drafted with the assistance of AI and reviewed by an editor.
Warren Cohen is a finance writer based in Phoenix, Arizona, covering personal finance topics including credit, banking, and beginner investing. He earned his degree in business administration from Arizona State University and began his career working in consumer finance, where he gained direct experience with lending and credit systems. He now writes for personal finance websites and fintech platforms, focusing on clear, practical content that helps readers make informed financial decisions.
