In her introductory remarks to her Annual Report to Congress, Erin Collins, the National Taxpayer Advocate, touted IRS successes following the pandemic, suggesting that the most recent filing season was the “smoothest yet.” For most Americans, she notes, the annual filing season is the only time they interact with the IRS—that makes it imperative for the IRS to get it right.

Collins says that IRS employees did get it right this year, collecting approximately $5 trillion in revenue, processing around 180 million income tax returns, and over five billion information forms. Most taxpayers filed their returns, paid their taxes, or received their refunds without any delays or intervention from the IRS. That should happen when the system is working. Here’s how that looked overall:

In addition, Collins says that there was “meaningful progress” in improving telephone service. The IRS has met its 85% Level of Service (LOS) goal on its Accounts Management telephone lines for the last three filing seasons, including the current year. The "Level of Service" is the number you get when you divide the number of taxpayers who reach a live assistor by the number of calls the IRS system routes to live assistors.

Phone service is just one piece of the taxpayer experience, which Collins says is driven by personnel and technology. Both are threatened under the new administration.