Pandemic Darlings The pandemic economy, in original documents
Home Profiles Erin M. Collins

Profiles · Officials

ProfilePerson

Erin M. Collins

Official · IRS

ERC
Type
Person
Role
Official · IRS
Programs
ERC
Updated

The profile

The National Taxpayer Advocate from March 2020, whose office took the side of businesses waiting on Employee Retention Credit claims: in May 2025 she reported more than 597,000 claims still unprocessed, and warned that a disallowed claim stuck in the IRS protest queue for two years could no longer be refunded even if the IRS later agreed it was valid.

Identity and role

Erin M. Collins leads the Taxpayer Advocate Service, "an independent organization within the IRS" that helps taxpayers with IRS problems and reports to Congress on the burdens of the tax law. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin appointed her on February 27, 2020, and she started on March 30, 2020, earlier than planned "due to the recent national emergency," the IRS said. Before that she spent 20 years as a managing director in KPMG's Tax Controversy Services practice for the Western Area and 15 years as an attorney in the IRS Office of Chief Counsel.

Pandemic-relief role

The Employee Retention Credit (ERC) was claimed on payroll returns and paid by the IRS, so when the IRS slowed processing, the businesses waiting on refunds came to Collins's office. In a May 2025 blog post, after the April 15, 2025 filing deadline, the National Taxpayer Advocate wrote that "as of early April, over 597,000 ERC claims remain in the IRS's inventory, including nearly 11,000 cases submitted through my office, TAS, that remain unresolved." The IRS had processed about 64 percent of the TAS-submitted claims, and "it could take at least until the end of calendar year 2025 to complete processing."

The same post points to a trap in the disallowance process. A business that protests a disallowance cannot track the case until the IRS reviews the protest and sends it to the Independent Office of Appeals. "If the process takes more than two years from the date of the disallowance notice, the IRS is legally barred from issuing a refund – even if it later agrees the taxpayer is right." It credited the IRS for new guidance on the Letter 105-C and Letter 106-C disallowance notices and said the guidance "came too late after confusion has already ensued."

In April 2026 the advocate's blog told businesses with denied claims how to use a new IRS process to request an extension of the two-year deadline.

No lawsuit or investigation names Collins in the records we reviewed. The backlog figures above are her office's counts; the IRS's own counts at other dates are collected on the ERC data page.

Where they are now (2025–2026)

Collins published National Taxpayer Advocate blog posts through at least October 2025, which the office's 2025 Annual Report to Congress cites. We did not confirm who held the post in September 2026.

Sources

Back to top