Tax Relief AnswersIRS Collection Statistics by Year
What the numbers say
The IRS publishes how many Offers in Compromise it receives and accepts each fiscal year in its annual Data Book. The table below compiles those figures in one place, with the acceptance rate and the average accepted offer computed from the IRS's own counts. The point of the table is simple: an Offer in Compromise is a real program, and it is also one the IRS turns down more often than it accepts. Anyone who tells you acceptance is typical is contradicting the IRS's own numbers.
How to read the table
- Offers received counts applications the IRS logged in that fiscal year (October through September).
- Offers accepted counts acceptances in that year; some were received in an earlier year, so the rate is an approximation of the odds, not an exact match of applications to outcomes.
- Dollars accepted is the total amount the accepted offers agreed to pay, not the debt they settled.
- The dataset is free to reuse with a link to this page.
Offers in Compromise by fiscal year
| Fiscal year | Offers received | Offers accepted | Acceptance rate | Dollars accepted | Average accepted offer |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 67,000 | 27,000 | 40.3% | $204,748,000 | $7,583 |
| 2016 | 62,937 | 26,663 | 42.4% | $225,945,883 | $8,474 |
| 2017 | 62,243 | 25,326 | 40.7% | $255,862,290 | $10,103 |
| 2018 | 59,127 | 23,929 | 40.5% | $261,286,000 | $10,919 |
| 2019 | 54,225 | 17,890 | 33.0% | $289,422,000 | $16,178 |
| 2020 | 44,809 | 14,288 | 31.9% | $158,013,000 | $11,059 |
| 2021 | 49,285 | 15,154 | 30.7% | $220,936,000 | $14,579 |
| 2022 | 36,022 | 13,165 | 36.5% | $234,319,000 | $17,799 |
| 2023 | 30,163 | 12,711 | 42.1% | $214,480,000 | $16,874 |
| 2024 | 33,591 | 7,199 | 21.4% | $163,383,000 | $22,695 |
| 2025 | 38,797 | 5,464 | 14.1% | $98,146,000 | $17,962 |
FY2015 counts are published by the IRS rounded to the nearest thousand, so that year's rate and average are approximate.
Liens, levies and payment plans by fiscal year
| Fiscal year | Federal tax lien notices filed | Levy notices requested | Seizures | New installment agreements | Agreements active at year end |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 515,247 | 1,464,026 | 426 | not published | not published |
| 2016 | 470,602 | 869,196 | 436 | not published | not published |
| 2017 | 446,378 | 590,249 | 323 | not published | not published |
| 2018 | 410,220 | 639,025 | 275 | 2,883,035 | 4,251,998 |
| 2019 | 543,604 | 782,735 | 228 | 2,821,134 | 4,241,975 |
| 2020 | 291,081 | 396,269 | 77 | 1,825,378 | 3,891,791 |
| 2021 | 212,251 | 305,610 | 96 | 2,361,646 | 3,782,842 |
| 2022 | 157,323 | 273,286 | 89 | 2,383,849 | 3,713,414 |
| 2023 | 179,019 | 286,270 | 68 | 2,696,963 | 4,038,081 |
| 2024 | 196,996 | 313,792 | 71 | 3,403,214 | 4,642,420 |
| 2025 | 214,099 | 339,137 | 50 | 3,160,047 | 4,870,810 |
Installment agreement counts exclude short-term plans in some years and include them from FY2024, so compare years with care. Most IRS collection was suspended from March 30 to July 15, 2020.