In a report published Nov. 10, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has no current plan to include satisfaction or taxpayer burden in its research on the costs and revenue effects of taxpayer services.
The research project is intended to help the IRS decide how to direct taxpayer-service funds by comparing service costs with tax revenue. Officials told GAO the current work does not examine other possible benefits, including taxpayer satisfaction or taxpayer burden, though its scope could expand later.
IRS assists taxpayers through its website, phone support, written correspondence and in-person centers. GAO said these services may encourage tax compliance and ease taxpayer burden. Measuring their effects over time would require skilled staff and funding to develop useful data and methods.
GAO identified five IRS studies on the relationship between services and compliance or satisfaction. One study from 2013 found that taxpayer dissatisfaction may contribute to noncompliance. IRS reports from 2007 and 2008 called for more analysis of how services affect compliance and revenue to guide investment choices; GAO said the IRS provided no documented results from that work.
The review also falls under GAO’s oversight of IRS operational funding from the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. In a February 2024 paper on estimating revenue effects from that broader funding program, the IRS included service-related effects on compliance among the topics it intended to study. The paper’s estimates covered IRS investments overall, not taxpayer services alone.
GAO’s review of 12 studies involving other countries’ tax administrations found reported benefits associated with taxpayer services. Studies in Belgium and Germany linked customer-focused approaches with lower compliance costs for businesses. Those findings do not quantify a causal effect for IRS services.
A separate GAO review in July 2025 found the IRS had not fully established a way to use evidence to assess whether service improvements affected taxpayer experience. It examined the status of 152 service-improvement projects. The Nov. 10 report gives no timetable for adding satisfaction or burden measures to the IRS research effort.
