IRS Backlog From Hell Drags 20 Months

IRS UNDER FIRE

The IRS is making identity theft victims wait nearly two years to get their own money back, and a federal watchdog just called it exactly what it is.

Story Snapshot

The IRS takes an average of 20 months to resolve identity theft cases, with a peak of 22 months recorded in April 2024.
About 387,000 identity theft cases sat unresolved at the end of the 2025 filing season, according to the National Taxpayer Advocate.
The IRS runs roughly 60 separate case management systems that cannot talk to each other, a key reason cases stall.
The IRS’s own watchdog says the delay is “unacceptable” and recommends cutting resolution time to four months.

Nearly Two Years to Get Your Own Refund Back

Someone steals your identity, files a fake tax return in your name, and the IRS freezes your refund. That is bad enough. What happens next is worse. You file the right paperwork, mail in Form 14039, the Identity Theft Affidavit, and then you wait. And wait.

The National Taxpayer Advocate, an independent watchdog inside the IRS, says the average wait is now 20 months. At its worst point, in April 2024, it hit 675 days — nearly 22 months. ^[1]

Identity theft victims face 'unconscionable' IRS delays, report says https://t.co/Cr9SmTBeou

— CNBC (@CNBC) June 24, 2026

This is not a new problem. In 2019, the average resolution time was 117 days. By 2021 it had climbed to 279 days. By 2023 it hit 556 days. The trend line is not subtle. ^[4]

The National Taxpayer Advocate, Erin Collins, did not mince words. She called the delays “unacceptable” and said the IRS should be resolving these cases in four months, not twenty. That is a reasonable standard. Most Americans would call waiting nearly two years for money that is legally yours more than just unacceptable.

A Bureaucratic Nightmare Built on Outdated Technology

The IRS does not just have one system for handling identity theft cases. It has about 60 of them, and they generally cannot share information with each other. ^[3]

Staff manually type data from paper tax returns digit by digit. When a case requires someone to cross-check information across multiple systems, the process grinds to a near halt.

This is not a funding problem alone. It is a management and technology failure that has been allowed to fester for years. Calling it a “legacy issue” is a convenient way to avoid accountability.

The IRS does deserve credit for one thing. It stopped $7 billion in fraudulent refunds in 2024 and 2025, and it resolved 955,000 identity theft filter cases without even needing to contact the taxpayer. ^[8]

When authentication was required and the taxpayer verified their identity, the IRS posted returns within an average of 13 days. That speed is possible. Which makes the 20-month average for full Identity Theft Victim Assistance cases even harder to defend.

The IRS Excuse That Does Not Hold Up

The IRS points to the pandemic as the original cause of the backlog. That explanation made sense in 2021. It does not hold up in 2026. The agency temporarily shut down early in the pandemic and shifted workers to other tasks, and cycle times exploded as a result. ^[4]

But five years later, with hundreds of thousands of cases still unresolved, “the pandemic did it” is no longer a reason. It is a dodge. Legitimate taxpayers are still waiting for refunds they are owed while the IRS hides behind a crisis that ended years ago.

Unconscionable is doing heavy lifting in that headline. IRS identity theft backlog has been broken for years

— Volodymyr Pavlenko (@mindinpanic) June 24, 2026

The IRS also argues that delays are a necessary trade-off for fraud prevention. There is some truth there. Fraud is real, and catching it matters. But the agency resolved fast-track cases in as few as 100 days when it prioritized them, proving speed is achievable. ^[5]

Choosing not to prioritize the full caseload is a policy decision, not an inevitability. Framing bureaucratic inaction as a security feature is the oldest trick in the government playbook. Victims of identity theft are not asking the IRS to skip fraud checks. They are asking it to do its job in a reasonable amount of time.

What Needs to Happen Now

The National Taxpayer Advocate’s recommendation is straightforward: get resolution times down to four months. ^[3] That is still a long time for someone waiting on money they earned, but it is a realistic target.

Reaching it requires the IRS to modernize its case management systems, end the practice of manually transcribing paper returns, and treat identity theft victims as a priority rather than an afterthought.

Congress should hold hearings, demand a timeline, and tie IRS budget approvals to measurable improvements in resolution speed. Sympathy without accountability changes nothing.