Unfortunately, Congress has only made matters worse.
Unfortunately, Congress has only made matters worse.
N early three decades ago, then–IRS Commissioner Charles Rossotti issued a statement addressing one of the agency’s most persistent problems: the accuracy of answers given by Internal Revenue Service telephone assisters. Not surprisingly, the agency came under criticism for the high error rates in the answers that telephone assisters gave to taxpayers. Rossotti did not blame the employees. He blamed the system.
The former commissioner explained that IRS assisters were expected to answer taxpayer questions by mastering not only an increasingly complex tax code, but also an enormous and constantly changing body of Treasury regulations, revenue rulings, revenue procedures, notices, Internal Revenue Manual provisions, IRS publications, training materials, and judicial decisions. The sheer volume of law and administrative guidance was so overwhelming that no realistic amount of employee training could produce consistently accurate answers.
Rossotti summed up the problem in a single, unforgettable sentence: “Fundamentally, we are attempting the impossible.” He went on to say, “We are expecting employees and our managers to be trained in areas that are far too broad to ever succeed, and our manuals and training materials are, therefore, unmanageable in scope and complexity.”
He was exactly right. Unfortunately, Congress has spent the last 26 years making matters worse.
When Rossotti made that observation, the body of federal tax law consisted of approximately 1.3 million words. Today it exceeds 4 million words, and that figure does not begin to include the ever-expanding universe of legal authority (mentioned above) that must be consulted to answer even routine taxpayer questions. Congress has more than tripled the complexity of the tax law since Rossotti warned that the IRS already was attempting the impossible. It should come as no surprise that the challenge facing the IRS has not been overcome.
Here’s the proof.
On June 10, 2026, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) issued a report evaluating the quality of answers provided by IRS telephone assisters. TIGTA reviewed a statistically valid sample of 200 recorded calls out of 3.8 million total calls made to just two of the IRS’s principal taxpayer assistance telephone lines between February 15 and May 15, 2025. The findings are disturbing. Twenty-six percent of the calls reviewed failed to satisfy the IRS’s own quality standards. More troubling still, approximately 14 percent of taxpayers received “inaccurate or incomplete information” from IRS telephone assisters. That means over a half a million people received inaccurate or incomplete information from just two call centers in just two months.
Those statistics represent far more than customer-service shortcomings. We cannot lose sight of the fact that each of these callers is an actual taxpayer attempting to obey the law by obtaining answers to filing questions or seeking direction on how to pay. And they are being given the wrong answers by the very agency responsible for administering the law.
TIGTA specifically warned that inaccurate or incomplete responses put taxpayers in a position of noncompliance, despite their best efforts. The report recognized that taxpayers receiving incorrect information often must contact the IRS again, increasing the burden on both citizens and the system.
But it’s worse than that. Every incorrect answer has consequences. An incorrect explanation of filing requirements can result in delinquent returns. An incorrect answer regarding deductions or credits can produce additional tax, penalties, and interest. An incomplete explanation of collection procedures can cause taxpayers to lose valuable administrative and judicial appeal rights. Bad advice can lead to audits, collection action, unnecessary litigation, and potentially years of avoidable controversy.
Millions of Americans call the IRS for one reason. They need help complying with the law. During fiscal year 2025, taxpayers placed a total of 66.43 million calls to IRS assistance and customer service lines. They are not looking for loopholes or ways to evade taxes. They simply want to know what the law requires of them. Yet a significant number of those taxpayers were given answers that were inaccurate or incomplete.
Why is anyone surprised by this?
I have long argued that tax laws must be understandable if people are expected to properly comply with their duties. Complexity inevitably produces confusion. Confusion leads to inconsistent application of the law. Inconsistent application increases compliance costs, undermines confidence in the fairness of the tax system, and ultimately erodes people’s willingness to comply.
The June 10 TIGTA report offers compelling empirical evidence supporting that principle. The problem is not that IRS employees are poorly trained. The problem is that no amount of training can overcome the impossible task that Congress has assigned them. Consider what telephone assisters are expected to know, or at least have ready access to:
- Thousands of pages of statutory provisions
- Tens of thousands of pages of Treasury regulations
- Revenue rulings
- Revenue procedures
- IRS notices
- Announcements
- Internal Revenue Manual provisions
- IRS publications
- Chief counsel advice
- Judicial decisions from the U.S. Tax Court, district courts, circuit courts of appeals, and the Supreme Court
Every one of these authorities changes over time. Congress adds new credits, deductions, exclusions, reporting requirements, penalties, elections, transition rules, phase-outs, phase-ins, and exceptions with astonishing regularity. Treasury issues new regulations. Courts announce new interpretations. The IRS revises its own procedures. And there’s no end to it.
Then taxpayers call, expecting a definitive answer to questions involving unique factual circumstances that often cannot be reduced to a simple yes or no. The remarkable fact is not that IRS employees occasionally provide incorrect answers. The remarkable fact is that anyone expects otherwise.
The core of the problem is that Congress has created a tax system so vast and so complicated that even the agency charged with administering it cannot consistently explain it correctly. Ironically, policymakers continue searching for technological solutions to this legislative problem.
Just days after TIGTA released its telephone assistance audit, another TIGTA report evaluated the IRS’s assisted chat and chatbot programs. That report demonstrated that technology cannot consistently overcome the complexity of the tax code. The June 10 report demonstrates that human expertise cannot overcome it, either. Taken together, these reports confirm that the only practical solution to the problem of inaccurate answers to tax law questions is to radically simplify the law — period.
Former Commissioner Rossotti warned us more than 25 years ago that the IRS was “attempting the impossible” given the scope and complexity of the system. Instead of heeding years of advice and engaging in meaningful simplification, Congress more than tripled the size of the code. Congress must stop asking how to improve IRS customer service and begin asking why the tax law has become virtually impossible to administer in the first place.
The solution is not more training initiatives (though they can’t hurt). It is not expanded chatbots. It is not another artificial intelligence platform. The solution is a tax code that ordinary Americans — and yes, even the IRS itself — can understand.
Until Congress comes to its senses and abandons its obsession with endless complexity, TIGTA will continue issuing reports documenting what Commissioner Rossotti told us years ago.
We are attempting the impossible.