If you need to call the IRS, be prepared for a long wait—or to not get through at all. I know people at the IRS who were told before the shutdown that the Level of Service (LOS) was set at less than 20%: this means the IRS goal is to answer just less than 20% of the calls coming in.
Why Agents Aren’t Answering the Phones
The person I know at the IRS usually takes calls, but they get pulled off the phone after an hour or two and told to work on their inventory of amended returns. The amended returns my contact processes are relatively new now, not the 16-weeks-old backlog that is often publicly reported.
Some of you may have received a CP05 or 4464C letter because the IRS can’t verify your income on a return. This could be due to something minor, like your preparer reporting a W-2 under the wrong SSN. When the numbers don’t add up, you start getting letters saying your return is under review.
You need to call the IRS so a person can look at the account to see if there is a problem. My contact finds these errors quite frequently. While they can eventually send a referral, the review timeframe can be extensive, and they can’t do that if they are busy working on amended returns and you can’t get through.
Staffing Crisis and the Furlough Impact
The IRS is currently firing people through a reduction in force. Remember, the IRS has roughly the same number of employees it had in the 1970s, but the U.S. population has grown substantially.
You could contact your member of Congress, and they can escalate your case to a Taxpayer Advocate. However, during the shutdown, those advocates were all furloughed too, closing that emergency path for many people.
Clarifying the Shutdown: Obamacare (ACA) and Immigrant Healthcare
This shutdown will hopefully end tomorrow. The Democrats want to preserve the Obamacare (ACA) subsidies, which prevents peoples’ health insurance premiums from spiking. Those letters warning of premium increases will start going out in November, and that’s likely when this political issue will drop.
The nonsense about this fight being over billions to fund healthcare for illegal immigrants is patently false. If you look at the instructions for Form 8962 (Premium Tax Credit), on page 3 at the top it clearly says:
Unlawfully present in the United States. You are not entitled to the PTC for health coverage for an individual for any period during which the individual is not lawfully present in the United States.
Illegal immigrants won’t qualify for the PTC or the premium tax credit, which is the subsidy for health insurance purchased through Obamacare (the ACA). Furthermore, people showing up at ERs without insurance are not turned away or interrogated about residency status by doctors or hospitals; one healthcare provider called that an ethics violation.
What to Expect Next
The shutdown will end once those premium letters start going out. But the IRS low Level of Service (under 20%) was set long before the shutdown began. This service level may only change once the filing season starts sometime in late January 2026, or maybe even February.
Fewer IRS representatives will be on the phone. Many took the payoff to quit, others retired, and that attrition continues. And regarding the speculative ICE claims—the low service levels are fundamentally driven by staffing and budget issues, not outside interference.
