A recent report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration:

From January 2022 through March 2025, the IRS accepted approximately 116,000 e-file Provider applications. The IRS performs suitability checks on applicants for the e-file Program. However, we found that programming errors, procedural updates, and unaddressed suitability issues contributed to the approval of potentially ineligible applicants. We reviewed a statistical sample of 138 Responsible Officials associated with accepted applications and found that 14 had suitability issues that were not addressed:

8 had tax compliance issues (i.e., they either did not file a tax return for one or more tax periods, did not pay a tax debt, or did not establish an installment agreement to pay a debt owed).

5 had a criminal history that the IRS had not researched and addressed, or their criminal history was not reviewed because there was no fingerprint data on file.

1 applicant’s citizenship was not verified.

During this same period, the IRS accepted 138 individuals into the e-file Program, but their citizenship status records indicated they were not eligible. In addition, approximately 6,300 individuals had an unknown citizenship status in IRS records. We selected a judgmental sample and determined that the IRS did not verify the citizenship status on 47 percent of the cases sampled.

We also identified 67 IRS employees listed as Responsible Officials on e-file applications. IRS employees are prohibited from outside employment activities that involve preparing tax returns for compensation, gift, or favor.