A critical staffing vacuum at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has left millions of American taxpayers facing an agonising wait for their refunds this spring.
The agency entered the 2026 filing season with its workforce decimated, dropping from 102,000 employees to just 74,000 in a single year, down by 27 per cent compared with last year. This IRS staffing crisis 2026 is expected to transform the typical three-week refund window into a months-long ordeal for many. The timing could not be worse, as the agency grapples with a massive legislative overhaul and a lingering backlog of millions of unprocessed returns from previous years.
