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Optima Tax Relief’s 2026 report describes skepticism and uncertainty among people who enrolled with the company during 2025, while arguing that IRS automated enforcement remains active despite reduced staffing. The survey offers a view of that specific client group—not a representative measure of what U.S. taxpayers generally believe or experience.
What Optima’s report found—and who it represents
Optima Tax Relief says it invited all clients who enrolled during 2025 to participate in a survey. It collected responses in May and June 2026 and paired self-reported answers with aggregated, de-identified compliance records for the same client cohort. The company acknowledges possible response and recall bias, and says results for questions allowing multiple selections are reported as a share of total selections.
That methodology matters: respondents had sought professional tax-resolution help from Optima. The results describe those clients, not a random sample of U.S. taxpayers. Optima itself cautions against generalizing the findings to the broader taxpayer population. The report is published by a company that provides tax-resolution services, so its conclusions should be read with that relationship in mind.
Attitudes reported by the surveyed clients
Optima reports that 51% of respondents either did not believe the IRS enforces against most people who owe or were unsure. It also says 18% would trust the IRS to help resolve their tax situation, while 88% could not confidently say what to do about their tax problem. These are findings from Optima’s 2026 survey of its 2025 enrollees, not national estimates. Optima’s report and methodology
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The figures suggest uncertainty and low trust within this client group; they do not establish why respondents felt that way or whether people who owe taxes generally share those views. The survey prompt asking, “Did you try resolving it directly with the IRS first?” is relevant to the topic, but the report’s framing should not be mistaken for evidence that the IRS is unable to help any particular taxpayer.
Why “quieter IRS” does not mean “no enforcement”
Visible enforcement work—such as examinations, collections handled by staff, and appeals—depends in part on available personnel. Automated notices and assessments are a different kind of activity. A decline in staffing can reduce capacity for individualized work without, by itself, proving that automated systems have stopped identifying discrepancies or sending notices. Conversely, a notice or assessment is not the same thing as a completed collection action, lien, or levy.
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Optima’s report argues that automated enforcement continues to reach taxpayers even as conventional enforcement capacity has weakened. It attributes several FY2025 figures to IRS and Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) materials: 592,800 Automated Substitute for Return (ASFR) closures, a 135% increase over two years, a 271% rise in taxpayer contact, and $2.9 billion in additional assessments. Those are figures as presented by Optima; they should not be treated here as independently confirmed federal statistics. Nor should ASFR closures, taxpayer contacts, assessments, notices, and money actually collected be treated as interchangeable measures.
What federal data can—and cannot—tell taxpayers
The tax gap is a scale estimate, not a current enforcement tally
The IRS projected a gross tax gap of $696 billion for tax year 2022, comprising $539 billion in underreporting, $94 billion in underpayment, and $63 billion in nonfiling. The gross tax gap estimates taxes not paid on time; it is not a count of current investigations or a measure of how much the IRS collected through enforcement in FY2025. IRS tax-gap statistics
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Staff departures were substantial, but gross departures are not net losses
TIGTA reported that 31,273 people left the IRS, accepted deferred resignation, or used another incentive to depart between January 2025 and January 2026—about 30% of the workforce by its account. With roughly 2,000 hires by the time of its snapshot, TIGTA put the net staffing decrease at 28%. The departure count and net reduction describe different things; citing the former as the net loss would overstate the reduction. TIGTA’s January 2026 workforce update
The National Taxpayer Advocate’s January 2026 annual-report release also described a 27% workforce reduction, leadership turnover, and significant work implementing new tax-law changes. That release frames the operational pressures facing the IRS, but its workforce figure should not be silently substituted for TIGTA’s snapshot: the stated percentages come from separate reporting and may use different measurement framing. National Taxpayer Advocate’s 2025 annual report release
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IRS processing and collections figures are not enforcement outcomes
The IRS’s FY2025 Data Book overview reports $5.3 trillion in gross taxes collected and 271.4 million returns and other forms processed. These figures show the scale of the agency’s overall work, not the amount collected from enforcement cases or the number of taxpayers reached by automated enforcement. IRS Data Books
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Automation and personal assistance are separate parts of tax administration
The National Taxpayer Advocate’s 2026 mid-year report describes a widening operational divide: some taxpayer issues can be handled through automated systems, while others need individualized assistance, manual review, or flexibility. This distinction helps explain why an IRS can continue sending system-generated notices while taxpayers with complicated cases still face a need for human help. The advocate’s filing-season phone measures are bounded through April 18, 2026, so they describe that period rather than the whole fiscal year. National Taxpayer Advocate’s 2026 mid-year report
For a taxpayer, an automated notice is a prompt to understand and address the stated issue, not proof that a human has reviewed every detail or that a particular collection action is inevitable. The practical next step depends on the notice, the return or tax period involved, and the taxpayer’s records; the report does not establish an outcome or resolution path for an individual case.
Quick Recap
How to read the report without overgeneralizing it
- Keep the population in view: the survey concerns Optima clients enrolled during 2025, not all people who owe taxes.
- Separate perceptions from outcomes: respondents’ trust and beliefs are self-reported attitudes, not measurements of IRS enforcement success.
- Separate enforcement signals: staffing, automated contacts, assessments, case closures, collections, liens, and levies measure different activities.
- Keep dates attached: the tax gap concerns tax year 2022; the workforce snapshot runs from January 2025 to January 2026; the Data Book covers FY2025.
- Read company-published conclusions accordingly: Optima is both the report publisher and a tax-resolution service provider; its survey does not predict the result for any individual.
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