Notice Ninja's 2025 Data Review Report and Notice Compliance in 2026

Written by Jeanne Rogers | Jan 27, 2026 4:00:00 PM

The 2025 Data Review Report from Notice Ninja is a strategic asset for tax operations teams navigating a more complex, fast-moving compliance landscape. Built on verified activity from our platform and informed by broader federal and regulatory trends, it highlights how some teams manage tens of thousands of notices each year while others face comparable pressure from multi-entity structures, international jurisdictions, or lean internal staffing.

The report delivers actionable benchmarks, emerging risk indicators, and technology trends that enterprise tax teams can use to prepare for the year ahead.

As government agencies modernize, while others maintain legacy processes, notice volume continues to rise, organizations that rely on manual or fragmented frameworks will face growing exposure. The path forward requires better visibility, standardized workflows, and systems that can adapt as compliance requirements shift.

Tax Notice Volume Grew in 2025 While IRS Capacity Declined

The IRS workforce decreased by 25 percent in the first half of 2025, but notice issuance held steady across federal, state, and local agencies. This created a widening gap between agency demands and taxpayer readiness. The IRS is continuing to move toward digital-first enforcement, and the BDO 2026 Tax Policy Outlook reinforces that policy shifts will persist into next year.

On the NOTICENINJA platform, compliance activity surged in response to this environment:

More than 7.8 million tax-related actions were logged by users in 2025
2.7 million tasks were executed using standardized workflows
Over 800,000 pages were scanned with OCR for intake and routing
Workflows were deployed across 1,900 cities and 55,000 local jurisdictions

California generated the highest workflow volume by state, reflecting the operational complexity of managing tax notices across multiple jurisdictions. This state-level activity is increasingly becoming a national concern for large employers and tax departments.

IRS Pressures and Policy Shifts Will Shape 2026

Agencies are expected to move faster and with less tolerance for response delays in 2026. According to BDO, tax authority priorities include enforcement simplification, faster audit triggers, and increased reliance on digital correspondence. Meanwhile, TIGTA findings point to continued IRS resource constraints, which are accelerating the shift to automation and away from agent-supported engagement.

Organizations managing 5,000 to 25,000+ tax notices annually which is common among enterprise tax teams and Fortune 1000 companies and they are especially exposed if they lack standardized processes and automation. Our data shows that teams with outdated workflows or inconsistent ownership models experienced higher rates of escalation, aging notices, and missed resolution windows.

Global compliance continues to expand in both complexity and volume. NOTICENINJA has the ability to support users in over 170 countries and processed notices in more than 90 languages. This reinforces the need for systems that scale internationally with built-in localization and governance.

Key Areas Where Top-Performing Tax Teams Improved

The 2025 Data Review Report identifies three areas where organizations using NOTICENINJA improved performance, reduced risk, and built resiliency:

Intelligent Intake and Assignment
Teams that adopted automated intake and OCR reduced task routing time by over 35 percent, resulting in faster resolution and fewer bottlenecks across departments.
Centralized Compliance Oversight
Organizations that consolidated notice management across entities and teams improved first-pass resolution by 28 percent and reduced internal handoffs by 41 percent.
Predictive Risk Detection
Teams using pattern recognition tools were able to identify recurring notice types, resolve duplicates before escalation, and better prioritize their responses based on historical trends.

Leadership Perspective from Notice Ninja

Amanda Reineke, CEO and Co-founder of Notice Ninja, emphasizes the operational value of centralized systems:

“We are seeing a shift in mindset. Forward-thinking tax teams are investing in scalable systems that help them respond quickly, consistently, and with full visibility. It is not about volume alone. It is about managing risk with speed, confidence, and coordination.”

2026 Will Challenge Manual and Siloed Tax Teams

As enforcement becomes more automated and less forgiving, tax departments without scalable systems will fall behind. Audit timelines are tightening. Refunds are increasingly delayed due to notice backlogs. Multi-jurisdictional exposure continues to rise. The combination of these forces makes inaction more costly each quarter.

The data shows that organizations investing in automation and visibility are not just resolving notices faster. They are making compliance more predictable and reducing time spent on low-value tasks.

Compliance Risk Is Increasing Across All Verticals

The 2025 Data Review Report details risk patterns across industry segments. Teams across key verticals face heightened exposure due to notice volume and operational fragmentation, including:

Corporate Tax Departments must manage notices across expanding legal entities and jurisdictions, often with disconnected workflows or shared inboxes that create risk and inefficiency.
Private Equity Firms face limited visibility across their portfolio companies. Without centralized notice tracking, fund-level compliance risk increases and resolution delays can affect deal timing and valuation.
CPA Firms are dealing with rising client expectations and shrinking tolerance for errors. Most firms continue to rely on spreadsheets or email folders to track notices, which limits their capacity to scale without risk.
Professional Employer Organizations (PEOs) are managing notices for thousands of employee records across multiple states. This volume, combined with the need for accuracy and audit-ability, creates a strong business case for automation, especially among Certified PEOs.

Use the 2025 Data Review Report to Benchmark and Plan

The 2025 Data Review Report is designed to help tax and compliance leaders evaluate their current workflows, benchmark against industry activity, and begin planning for stronger performance in 2026. It includes anonymized usage insights, automation adoption rates, and risk exposure patterns by jurisdiction.

The insights are actionable and grounded in real-world usage data from NOTICENINJA customers.

Now is the time to assess how prepared your team is to handle what comes next.

Download the 2025 Data Review Report and see how leading organizations are building future-ready notice operations.

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