The Where’s My Refund Team at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is being recognized for significantly improving the taxpayer experience by optimizing the Where’s My Refund toolset. Recognizing the critical importance of refund status to taxpayers, the team conducted extensive research and applied service design techniques to enhance usability and transparency.

 

They developed personas and journey maps to understand taxpayer needs and identified pain points in the user journey. Key improvements included integrating additional status codes, crafting clearer status messages, modernizing the web interface for mobile responsiveness, and upgrading the automated hotline for conversational interactions.

 

These efforts culminated in deploying the enhanced toolset well before the 2024 filing season, resulting in improved clarity and confidence for taxpayers tracking their refunds. The team’s innovations have effectively reduced barriers and frustrations, earning the trust and satisfaction of millions of taxpayers, as evidenced by 16.3 million message views and handling over 370,000 calls within the early months of deployment.