Identity theft continues to plague the IRS and in 2023, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) received over a million reports of identity theft, continuing a trend of theft reports exceeding one million per year for the past several years. But these are just the identity theft occurrences reported to the FTC. A recent report issued by the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) places the 2023 frequency of identity theft at about 15 million instances with a total dollar loss attributable to identity theft at $23 billion. Each year, the IRS’s identity theft filters seek to stop identity thieves from getting refunds, and as a result, the IRS suspends processing on a few million refund returns it suspects identity thieves submitted. After suspending a claimed refund, the IRS issues a letter to the taxpayer shown on the return requesting the taxpayer authenticate their identity within 30 days. However, taxpayers often take much longer to respond to this letter. During the 2023 filing season, taxpayers took an average of 52 days to respond to IRS letters requesting identity authentication; however, some taxpayers took more than six months to respond to an IRS request to authenticate their identity. Ultimately, the IRS ends up releasing over half of the refunds it freezes to legitimate taxpayers after authentication. Nevertheless, all of these taxpayers still had to experience the burden of authenticating their identities with the IRS to receive their legitimate refunds. In conjunction with the IRS Taxpayer Services Business Operating Division, TAS will focus on identifying the reasons taxpayers delayed authenticating their identities and any barriers they encountered using various IRS identity authentication methods.