Nevada has one in-person IRS office for every 304,533 foreign-born residents — the states with the most immigrants have the fewest offices

In-person IRS help is scarcest where the most immigrants live

The finding: the IRS runs 371 in-person Taxpayer Assistance Centers across the 50 states and DC. Divide each state’s foreign-born population by its office count and the states carrying the most immigrants turn out to have the fewest offices per person. The five most stretched:

Nationally the ratio is 127,626 foreign-born residents per in-person office. The best-covered state, Montana, has one office for every 3,668 — a 107× spread from the least-covered state to the most.

Nevada is the one to sit with. It is 19% foreign-born, one of the highest shares in the country, and it has exactly 2 Taxpayer Assistance Centers — one in Las Vegas and one in Reno. A community of more than six hundred thousand foreign-born residents is served by two in-person federal tax offices, both in metro areas, both by appointment.

Every state, worst-covered first

Foreign-born residents for each in-person IRS office. Office counts were taken from the IRS locator on 2026-07-22; foreign-born population is the ACS 5-year estimate. Marked rows are above the national average of 127,626 per office.

Sources: IRS office locator and the Census Bureau ACS. "Foreign-born" includes naturalized citizens; it is used as the immigrant-population proxy, not a count of ITIN applicants. Not every office authenticates ITIN documents, and those that do require an appointment.

What the data shows

• Coverage runs backwards from need. The states with the largest immigrant populations — California, Florida, New York, New Jersey, Texas — sit at the top of the per-office table, not the bottom. In-person capacity has not been placed where the demand for it is.
• Small states can be desperately thin. Nevada’s 2 offices and Utah’s, Idaho’s and Delaware’s small counts mean that a fast-growing immigrant population is reached through a handful of locations. Twelve states and DC have 3 offices or fewer.
• The gap is enormous. One office per 3,668 foreign-born residents in Montana, one per 392,530 in California: the same federal service is roughly 107× more reachable per person in the best-covered state than the worst.
• Offices move, and not always upward. The counts here were pulled fresh from the IRS locator; four states changed between a May 2026 reading and this one, and D.C. dropped from two offices to one. A directory that looks static is not.

Why this matters for tax season

Most people never need to walk into an IRS office. But the ones who do are disproportionately immigrant filers: someone applying for an ITIN who would rather have a designated center authenticate their passport than mail the original; someone resolving a notice who does not file online; someone who needs help in a language the phone line does not reliably offer. For those situations the in-person office is not a convenience, it is the channel — and in the states where the most such filers live, it is also the scarcest.

Two honest limits before you read too much into a single row. “Foreign-born” is a broad denominator — it counts naturalized US citizens too, so it overstates the population that specifically needs an ITIN. And an office count is not a capacity measure: two offices in a dense metro may serve more people well than four spread thinly across a rural state. The ratio is a starting signal, not a verdict on any one state’s service.

If you need in-person help, the IRS local-office locator lists hours and requires an appointment for most services, and the ITIN guide covers which centers authenticate documents and what to bring.

Method and caveat

Office counts are pulled live from the IRS Taxpayer Assistance Center locator and counted by distinct office identifier per state, so two offices in the same city count as two. Foreign-born population is the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey 2024 5-year estimate. The ratio is foreign-born residents divided by in-person offices.

Three limits are stated plainly. The denominator is foreign-born, not ITIN filers — the former includes naturalized citizens and no source publishes the latter by state. The count is of all in-person offices, not ITIN-designated ones — not every center authenticates ITIN documents, and those that do work by appointment. And Puerto Rico is excluded because the Census foreign-born concept is not comparable there. Office hours, appointment rules and the services each location offers change; confirm at irs.gov before visiting.

Download the data: irs_office_access.json — all 51 jurisdictions, office count, foreign-born population, and residents per office.

Suggested citation: MigrantUSA, “In-person IRS office access by state, 2026,” https://migrantusa.com/datasets/irs-office-access-by-state/ (accessed [date]).

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Newsrooms, legal-aid and tax-clinic organisations, and immigrant-services navigators: drop in the panel below. It shows the national ratio and the most-stretched states, and updates when we refresh the office counts.

<iframe src="https://migrantusa.com/embed/irs-office-access/" width="100%" height="520"
        style="border:1px solid #e2e8e4;border-radius:8px;max-width:640px"
        title="In-person IRS office access by state" loading="lazy"></iframe>
<p style="font-size:12px">Source: <a href="https://migrantusa.com/datasets/irs-office-access-by-state/">MigrantUSA — IRS office access by state</a></p>