Service to Taxpayers

This section of the Data Book provides information on the scope and composition of the ways the IRS provides assistance, not only to taxpayers but also to tax-exempt organizations and government entities. The IRS assists taxpayers in meeting their Federal tax return filing and payment obligations through its telephone helplines, via the Internet, at IRS Taxpayer Assistance Centers, and through volunteer-provided income tax assistance.

View chart detailsXLSX. For additional graphs from this section, download the PDF of this year’s Data BookPDF.

Highlights of the Data

• In Fiscal Year (FY) 2021, the IRS as­sisted nearly 88.0 million taxpayers through correspondence, its en­terprise-wide telephone helplines, or at Taxpayer Assistance Centers (Table 9XLSX).
• In FY 2021, the IRS provided self-assistance to taxpayers through almost 2.0 billion visits to IRS.gov, including 632.4 million inquiries to the "Where's My Refund" application, and 16.8 million active IRS2GO mobile app users (Table 10XLSX).
• The IRS closed 94,466 applications for tax-exempt status in FY 2021. Of those, the IRS approved tax-exempt status for 86.4 percent of these applications (Table 12XLSX).
• In FY 2021, the IRS recognized nearly 2.0 million organizations, including new determinations, as tax-exempt. More than 1.8 million of these organizations were exempt under Internal Revenue Code section 501(c), with 1.4 million qualifying as tax-exempt under Internal Revenue Code Section 501(c)(3) (Table 14XLSX).

Index of Data Book Tables

Taxpayer Assistance: Tables 9–16

Table 9: Selected Taxpayer Assistance and Education Programs, by Type of Assistance or Program, Fiscal Year 2021XLSX
Table 10: Selected Online Taxpayer Assistance, by Type of Assistance, Fiscal Year 2021XLSX
Table 11: Taxpayer Advocate Service: Post-filing Taxpayer Assistance Program, by Type of Primary Issue and Relief, Fiscal Year 2021XLSX
Table 12: Closures of Applications for Tax-Exempt Status, by Organization Type and Internal Revenue Code Section, Fiscal Year 2021XLSX
Table 13: Receipts of Forms 8976, Notices of Intent To Operate Under Section 501(c)(4), Fiscal Year 2021 XLSX
Table 14: Tax-Exempt Organizations, Nonexempt Charitable Trusts, and Nonexempt Split-Interest Trusts, Fiscal Year 2021XLSX
Table 15: Determination Letters Issued on Employee Retirement Plans, by Type and Disposition of Plan, Fiscal Year 2021XLSX
Table 16: Technical Activities and Voluntary Compliance Closures, Fiscal Year 2021XLSX

Data for all years

• Table 9
• Table 10
• Table 11
• Table 12
• Table 13
• Table 14
• Table 15
• Table 16