The Season You Saw Coming
- TIGTA — “The Internal Revenue Service’s Readiness for the 2026 Filing Season” (memorandum, Jan. 26, 2026: staffing down ~19,000/19% to October 2021 levels; key processing inventories at ~2.0 million items in Dec. 2025 vs. 871K pre-pandemic; phone level-of-service goal lowered to 70% from 85%; last time LOS was ≤70% was the 2022 filing season, at 18% — “fewer than one-in-five incoming calls”; Accounts Management onboarded 2,300 of 3,500 approved hires, with new hires trained only to screen calls and answer basic refund questions; $2.6B in interest paid to individuals in Processing Year 2025)
- Journal of Accountancy — “About a quarter of callers to two IRS lines got poor service, TIGTA says” (June 16, 2026; TIGTA June 10 report: 26% of a 200-call sample on two lines, Feb. 15–May 15, 2025, did not receive quality service; extrapolated to ~1 million of 3.8 million callers)
- TIGTA — “Taxpayers Continue to Experience Customer Service Issues…” (Report 2026–10–0030, June 2026 — underlying report for the above)
- Federal News Network — “After missing hiring goals, IRS dials back taxpayer phone assistance targets,” Jory Heckman (Jan. 2026; National Taxpayer Advocate: LOS metric covers only ~a quarter of total call volume, and the IRS exceeded the 85% LOS metric in fiscal 2024; ~35 of 360 Taxpayer Assistance Centers closed as of Dec. 2025)
- BCG — “How Retailers Can De-Risk the 2025 Holiday Shopping Season,” Alex Barocas and Shilpa Sharma (Sept. 17, 2025; “beautifully wrapped disappointment”; reshape the plan to demand / execute with excellence / tune and scale with agility; holiday command center)
- Retail Dive — “Smaller retailers face their toughest holiday season in years,” Daphne Howland (Oct. 14, 2025; Xero research: 37% of small business owners worry about Black Friday traffic, 32% about holiday inventory, 30% about burnout; Astrid Vigeland of Folly 101, Portland, Maine)
- Xero — U.S. Black Friday survey (media release cited by Retail Dive)
The Feature: The Puddery
The Counterweight: Fireworks Stands
Company Mentioned
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