Taxpayer Advocate Service TAS

Congress created a Taxpayer Ombudsman inside the IRS in 1979, turned it into the Office of the Taxpayer Advocate in the Taxpayer Bill of Rights 2 of July 30, 1996, and strengthened it in the IRS Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998, which named its head the National Taxpayer Advocate. The Advocate is appointed by the Treasury Secretary and reports directly to Congress without prior review by the IRS or Treasury, an unusual degree of independence for an office inside an agency.

The service has at least one local office in every state, staffed by case advocates who help individuals and businesses facing financial hardship from an IRS action, such as a levy on wages or a frozen refund, or whose problems have not been resolved through normal IRS channels. Its help is free. It can issue Taxpayer Assistance Orders directing parts of the IRS to act or stop acting in a case. It also runs the Low Income Taxpayer Clinic grant program and championed the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, ten rights the IRS adopted in 2014 and Congress wrote into law in 2015.

Each year the National Taxpayer Advocate sends Congress a report on the most serious problems facing taxpayers, along with legislative recommendations, and the reports are among the most cited sources on IRS performance, from refund delays and unanswered phones to identity theft. In 2025 and 2026 the reports warned that the loss of about a quarter of the IRS workforce threatened service and processing. Supporters say the office gives ordinary taxpayers a voice inside a powerful agency, while some critics say its case load shows how often the IRS fails people in the first place.