Message from the Commissioner

I’m pleased to present the IRS Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years 2022-2026. In publishing this plan, we want to share our strategic priorities and how they shape the important work that takes place at the IRS, year in and year out, to help taxpayers. The goal is to provide a roadmap to help illustrate the many ways our employees will provide service to the nation for years to come.

Working for the IRS makes me extremely proud, and I’m excited about the future of our agency. My experiences as Commissioner have strengthened my belief that a fully functioning IRS is critical to the success of our nation. We serve and interact with more Americans than nearly any other public or private organization. When citizens perform their civic duty each year by preparing and filing their taxes and paying only what they should, they help fund critical aspects of the country’s infrastructure, ranging from schools and roads to Social Security payments and the nation’s military.

The IRS has undergone tremendous change over the past five years. On July 1, 2019, the Taxpayer First Act (TFA) was signed into law, and it gave us the opportunity to shape our future and rethink the way we operate. In particular, it helps us better interact with taxpayers, train our employees and restructure our organization, all important foundations for our future success.

As we worked to deliver the TFA Report to Congress, we found ourselves in uncharted waters during the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic presented some of the greatest challenges to the IRS in its history in terms of our ability to carry out our mission and protect the health and safety of taxpayers and our own workforce. IRS employees responded admirably by quickly implementing critical relief measures passed by Congress that included more than $800 billion in Economic Impact Payments disbursed to millions of Americans. IRS employees also successfully extended and proudly delivered the longest filing season on record in 2020 and delivered another extended filing season in 2021.

The IRS took steps to better serve underserved taxpayers by increasing the amount of information and assistance available to them in additional languages on forms, in publications and through phone interpreter services. We provided crucial help to millions of families through the Advance Child Tax Credit payments with proactive outreach to those who qualified, and we developed an online portal for easier access. We also continued to make important progress in our compliance programs, with a particular focus on abusive tax shelters, including syndicated conservation easements and microcaptive insurance arrangements. In addition, I’m proud of the Criminal Investigation unit’s recent efforts, including helping dismantle three terrorist financing cybercrime plots.

The IRS remains dedicated to improving service to taxpayers, maintaining the integrity of our tax system, empowering our workforce, supporting our partners and modernizing our systems. Working toward these strategic goals with consistent multi-year funding will help us better achieve our mission and our long-term vision and deliver on the promise of a new IRS that will take an innovative approach to the future of tax administration to better serve all taxpayers.

As I look back over my past few years here, I’m still extremely proud to be able to say, “I’m Chuck Rettig, and I work at the Internal Revenue Service.” Even with all the challenges, we’ve made great strides. The entire IRS workforce wants to do more in every area, and we will!

Charles P. Rettig
Commissioner of Internal Revenue Service

Related Pages

Taxpayer Bill of Rights