NEW: A look at IRS employee compliance with in-person work

Telework Decreased After the Return to In-Person Work Directive, but the IRS Will Face Challenges Monitoring Compliance Why did we do this evaluation? We initiated this review to determine whether the IRS complied with requirements for employees to return to in-person work. On January 20, 2025, the President issued a Return to In-Person Work directive requiring executive branch agencies to take steps, as soon as practicable, to end remote work arrangements and require employees to return to full-time, in-person work. What did we find? As of May 2025, fewer IRS employees reported teleworking. The share of employees reporting any telework declined from 65 percent to 25 percent between the pay periods ending March 8 (before the return-to-office policy) and May 3, 2025. During the same time period, about 70,000 IRS employees reported approximately 2 million daily time charges for in-person work. This is equivalent to each employee recording about 40 in-office time charges or working in the office five days per week during the review period. Most employees (96 percent) were assigned to a building with access card data, and 89 percent of recorded in-person time charges aligned with that access card data. However, about 11 percent of daily time charges did not have corresponding access card data to confirm in-person work. IRS officials noted several possible reasons for this, including miscoded time charges or issues with access cards. The IRS completed its first high-level review of telework use in November 2025, using data from the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2025 (July 1 to September 30). The IRS reported a 91 percent compliance rate for in-person work. As of January 2026, draft guidance for its telework review process was still pending approval. We encountered several challenges assessing IRS compliance with the return-to-office directive. For example, we could not verify whether employees worked a full in-office day because not all offices require employees to badge in and out. We also could not assess in-person work for employees assigned to locations without access card data. The IRS may face similar challenges as it continues to monitor telework.   For more information: Read the full report Having trouble viewing this email? View it as a Web page.

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