NTA Collins Working On Better Communication For Taxpayer Advocacy Service

WASHINGTON – National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins told attendees at a recent conference that she wants to see the Taxpayer Advocate Service improve its communications with taxpayers and tax professionals.


“What I would like to do is improve our responsiveness and communication with fill-in-the-blank, whether it be taxpayer or practitioner, because I think that is huge,” Collins told attendees November 18, 2025, at the American Institute of CPA’s National Tax Conference.


“I think a lot of my folks are working really hard to fix things, but they’re not necessarily communicating as fast and often as they should,” she continued. “So, I would like to see by year-end we’re in a position that that is a routine and not the exception.”


In tandem with that, Collins also told attendees she would like to see the IRS be quicker in terms of how it fixes issues. She pointed to the example of first-time abatement, something she called an “an amazing administrative relief for taxpayers” but one that is only available to those who know to ask for it.


She estimated that there are about one million taxpayers every year that are eligible to receive it and among those, most are lower income taxpayers.


The IRS, Collins noted, agreed a couple of years ago that this was a problem. “The challenge they had was how do they implement it through their systems?”


Collins was happy to report that those who qualify for first-time abatement will automatically be notified starting with the coming tax filing season, although she did not have any insight as to how the process would be implemented.

Patience

Collins also asked for patience from the taxpayer community in the wake of the recently-ended government shutdown, which has increased the TAS workload as TAS employees were not deemed essential and were furloughed during the shutdown.


She noted that TAS historically receives about 5,000 new cases a week and the shutdown meant the rank-and-file at TAS were not working. She said that the service did work to get some cases closed that didn’t require employee help.


“So, any of you who are coming in or have cases, please be patient,” Collins said. “Our guys are doing the best they can, but they do have, unfortunately, a backlog now coming in.”


By Gregory Twachtman, Washington News Editor

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