This is the full transcript of IRS Monday for September 28, 2026. Prefer to watch? The video is below.
Transcript
Good morning. It’s Monday, and this is IRS Monday. I’m Darrin Mish, tax attorney. Every Monday, I take the IRS news, cut out the noise, and tell you what actually matters if you owe the IRS or you think you might. Three things today: a government report that tells you exactly how the IRS is coming after unpaid balances right now, a notice that confused millions of people this year, and one free step that protects you from the fastest growing tax crime in the country.
Let’s go. The headline: the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, the watchdog that audits the IRS, put out a report on IRS enforcement, and the numbers tell a story that most people are getting wrong. Here’s what everybody heard. The IRS is shrinking. The examination and collection workforce dropped by roughly a quarter in a single year.
It went from over twenty-seven thousand people to about seventeen thousand five hundred people by the start of this year. Individual audit starts fell thirty percent. Audits of people making over four hundred thousand dollars fell twenty-seven percent. So people hear that and they think, “Great, the IRS is weak. Nobody’s coming.”
Here’s the part most people miss. In that same report, collection revenue went up seventeen percent, and the report says why. It’s the automated collection notices. The letters that were paused on and off during COVID are back and they’re running. Think about what that means. An audit needs a human being.
A revenue officer has to sit down, open a file, and ask you questions. Fewer people means fewer audits. Collection notices don’t need a human being. A computer sees an unpaid balance and prints a letter, then another letter, then the final notice, then the levy. Nobody has to decide to do it. The machine just runs.
So if you owe money to the IRS and they know about it, a smaller IRS doesn’t help you much. The part of the IRS that’s chasing you is the part that runs on autopilot. And one more thing: the report says the effects of those staffing cuts are likely to show up more over time. Now, that cuts both ways.
Fewer people answering the phone means it’s harder to get someone on the line when you need to stop a levy. Waiting until the last minute has never been a good plan, and it’s a worse plan now. If you’ve got notices sitting in a drawer, the drawer isn’t protecting you. Open them. Every one of them has a date, and some of those dates control your rights.
Now the quick hits. Number one, the CP53E notice. The same watchdog put out another report, this one on a notice about 4.2 million people are getting this year. Here’s the background. The government is phasing out paper refund checks, so if you filed without bank account information, the IRS sent you a CP53E telling you to go into your IRS online account and add your bank information so they could direct deposit your refund.
If you didn’t, you’d eventually get a paper check, but only after a wait. The report says that the rollout was rough. Instructions were unclear. Some people had to create online accounts or verify their identity through a third party, even open a bank account before they could get their money, and here’s my favorite part.
Some people who got the notice didn’t have a refund coming at all. Some of them owed the IRS money, and you can imagine how those calls went. Two things to take from this. First, if you’re owed a refund and you don’t have it, a missing bank account on file might be the reason. Check your online account.
Second, if you owe back taxes, don’t count on that refund. The IRS applies it to your old balance first. You’ll get a notice telling you where your money went, and it won’t be to you. Number two, identity theft. The IRS and its Security Summit partners have spent months warning about tax identity theft.
That’s when somebody files a return in your name, usually to grab a refund before you file your own. I see the aftermath of this, and it’s miserable. Your real return gets rejected, your refund gets frozen, and it can take a long time to untangle. There’s one free tool that shuts most of this down. It’s called the identity protection PIN.
It’s a six-digit number the IRS gives you, and it changes every year. Once you have one, a return filed with your Social Security number without that PIN gets rejected. Anybody who can verify their identity can get one through their IRS online account. It takes a few minutes. Do it before filing season starts, not after somebody’s already filed as you.
Here’s this week’s takeaway. The IRS has fewer people, but the IRS collection machine doesn’t need people. Notices are going out automatically, and the clock starts when the letter’s dated, not when you finally open it. So this week, do three things. Open your IRS mail, log in to your IRS online account and look at what’s actually on your balance, and while you’re in there, get your identity protection PIN.
If what you find in there scares you, that’s what we’re here for. The reality is usually much more manageable than the nightmare in your head. If you owe the IRS and you want to know where you actually stand, let’s talk. Go to getirshelp.com or call my office at 813-229-7100. If you want IRS Monday in your inbox every week, the sign-up link is below.
I’ll see you next Monday, and thanks for watching.
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