Each June, the National Taxpayer Advocate delivers Congress an assessment of the tax filing season that just ended, and this year’s verdict was largely positive: the Internal Revenue Service processed nearly 139 million individual returns and issued more than 90 million refunds despite new tax law changes and a shrinking workforce. But folded into that mostly favorable review is a count of the taxpayers the smooth season left behind, including more than a million people who waited well past the IRS’s normal turnaround time to see their money.
14 Million Returns Frozen for a Second Look
During the 2026 filing season, more than 14 million individual income tax returns were suspended during processing for additional review, according to National Taxpayer Advocate Erin M. Collins’s Fiscal Year 2027 Objectives Report to Congress, released June 24, 2026. That freeze happens even in a filing season the report otherwise calls largely successful: of the 140,222,000 individual returns the IRS received, it processed 138,567,000, with about 98 percent filed electronically and roughly 65 percent resulting in a refund. A suspended return does not mean the return is fraudulent; the freeze can stem from anything the IRS’s processing filters flag for a closer look, but it does mean the refund waits until the review clears.
Inside the kit: A notice decoder, the refund-trace steps for Form 3911, a refund status tracker spreadsheet and the 3-year refund deadline. Open The IRS Refund Recovery Kit.
A Wait of About Five and a Half Weeks, on Top of Normal
More than one million taxpayers did not get their refunds within the IRS’s normal processing time this filing season, waiting an average of about five and a half weeks beyond that baseline, the report found. “For millions of taxpayers, the filing season was frustrating, confusing, and financially disruptive,” Collins wrote. “Some taxpayers whose returns were frozen by IRS filters waited weeks or months for refunds they depended on to pay rent, buy groceries, or cover medical expenses.” The average refund issued during the season was $3,275, money that for many households covers a specific bill or expense rather than sitting unused, which is part of why a five-and-a-half-week delay lands differently than it would for a discretionary purchase.
Phone Lines Where Only One in Five Calls Got Answered
Taxpayers who tried to call the IRS about a stalled return often could not get through. The agency received 48.1 million calls in the 2026 filing season, up from 50.2 million the year before, but answered only 9.9 million of them — 21 percent — with an average hold time of 14 minutes, worse than the prior season’s 25 percent answer rate and 8-minute hold. The two lines taxpayers use most when a refund is stuck fared even worse: the Taxpayer Protection Program line, which handles identity verification for suspended returns, answered just 19 percent of its 2.4 million calls with a 20-minute average wait, and the Installment Agreement/Balance Due line answered 31 percent of 3.4 million calls with a 45-minute average wait.
Nearly Two Years to Close an Identity Theft Case
For taxpayers whose returns get flagged specifically for suspected identity theft, the wait can stretch far beyond five and a half weeks. The report found the IRS took nearly two years on average, about 20 months, to resolve identity theft victim assistance cases, with more than half a million cases still pending in inventory at the end of the filing season. “For many low- and middle-income taxpayers, waiting nearly two years for a refund is not merely an inconvenience but a financial hardship,” the report states. Collins’s office has flagged the same delay for three consecutive years, and cutting it is now listed among the Taxpayer Advocate Service’s formal advocacy objectives for the coming fiscal year.
A Separate Delay for Taxpayers Who Need a Paper Check
A third group of taxpayers ran into trouble for a different reason entirely: they could not receive their refund by direct deposit. As the IRS implemented Executive Order 14247, which pushes federal payments toward electronic delivery, the Fiscal Year 2027 Objectives Report found the agency had not built clear procedures for taxpayers, including unbanked, lower-income, elderly and overseas filers, who needed an exception to get a paper check instead, producing refund delays of six weeks or more. By April 27, the IRS had sent about 4 million notices to taxpayers whose direct deposit information was missing or incorrect, notices that, the report found, omitted the details a taxpayer would need to request a waiver and fall back to a paper check.
A Growing Gap Between Automated and Manual Cases
The report credits the IRS’s technology upgrades with much of the season’s overall success: taxpayers logged into their online accounts nearly 121 million times, checked the Where’s My Refund? tool about 346 million times, a 9 percent increase over the prior year, and used those accounts to pull information returns more than 3.7 million times. But Collins wrote in the report’s preface that the same season exposed “a growing divide in tax administration between taxpayers whose issues can be resolved through automated systems and taxpayers whose situations need individualized assistance, manual review, or flexibility,” naming elderly, disabled, limited-English-proficient and unbanked taxpayers as those most likely to fall on the wrong side of that divide. “A digital-first strategy can improve tax administration but must not become a digital-only strategy,” she wrote, adding that the IRS must preserve phone assistance, in-person service and clear notices even as it automates. The report ties that principle directly to the taxpayers described above: the million-plus who waited 5.5 weeks past normal, the callers who could not get through, and the identity theft victims still waiting nearly two years for a resolved case.
The Gap Between a Frozen Refund and a Traced One
A suspended-return notice tells a taxpayer that a return is under review, not which of several possible holds applies or how long a resolution might take. The forms and deadlines that actually govern a refund trace or an identity-verification case rarely appear next to the notice itself.
The IRS Refund Recovery Kit is a 13-page kit built around a notice decoder and a refund status tracker spreadsheet.
Read the refund status tracker spreadsheet in The IRS Refund Recovery Kit.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by a human editor. Figures are linked to their primary sources.
