irs.gov

Readiness by lane

Green: irs.gov. Thin bar: Government Services peer median.

Priority fixes for irs.gov

Ordered by impact and by how common each practice is among peers.

1. Priority 1 · Harden

   Certificate has more than 14 days left

   Observed: The certificate from Let's Encrypt was due to expire on 2026-11-02 (9 days after the check).

   Why it matters: An expired certificate makes browsers show a full-page warning. Renewing well ahead of expiry leaves time to fix a failed renewal.

   What to do: Automate renewal with ACME (for example Let's Encrypt or your CDN's managed certificates) and add a renewal review to your release calendar so any certificate inside 21 days of expiry gets attention.

   98% of Government Services peers do this. Limit: Certificate and protocol were observed from one vantage point; CDNs can present different certificates by region.

   Guide: HTTPS and TLS Guide for Website Owners

2. Priority 2 · Accelerate

   Static files cached for 30 days or more

   Observed: A same-site stylesheet or script was cacheable for 1 days, short of the 30-day benchmark.

   What to do: Give versioned (fingerprinted) CSS, JavaScript, fonts and images Cache-Control: public, max-age=31536000, immutable, and change the file name whenever the content changes.

   30% of Government Services peers do this.

   Guide: Browser Caching Guide for Website Owners

3. Priority 3 · Accelerate

   No render-blocking scripts in <head>

   Observed: The homepage <head> loaded 3 external scripts without async or defer.

   What to do: Add defer to scripts that need the DOM, async to independent ones such as analytics, or move them to the end of the body.

   39% of Government Services peers do this.

   Guide: Control Third-Party Scripts Before They Control Your Page

4. Priority 4 · Accelerate

   Modern image formats in use

   Observed: The homepage had 18 images and none used WebP or AVIF.

   What to do: Serve WebP or AVIF with a JPEG or PNG fallback, either through an image CDN or by generating both formats at build time.

   15% of Government Services peers do this.

   Guide: AVIF, WebP, JPEG, and PNG: Choose the Right Image Format

What irs.gov already does well

Practices fewer than half of Government Services peers use.

• DNSSEC signedDNSSEC delegation (DS record) present.19% of peers
• Reachable over IPv6IPv6 address published.27% of peers
• Certificate lifetime of 100 days or lessShort-lived 89-day certificate from Let's Encrypt, already inside the 2027 limit.34% of peers

What we saw

Homepage checked

https://www.irs.gov/

Homepage response

HTTP 200

TLS

TLSv1.3, HTTP/2

Certificate

Let's Encrypt, 89-day validity, expiring 2026-11-02

CDN or edge

Akamai, Acquia

Platform or framework

Drupal

DNS operators

1 self-run or other nameserver domain

HSTS

max-age 365 days

DMARC policy

p=reject

Homepage HTML

144 KB, br

Images on homepage

18 (svg 10, jpg 5, png 3)

Limits: homepage only, one location, one moment. Header checks reflect the homepage response; other pages may differ.

Stack and providers

Seen in the homepage response, certificate and DNS. Provider pages compare how their customers configure the same checks.

All 31 checks

Select a gap for the method and fix. How each check works

Compare with other Government Services sites

• clave.gob.es66
• e-efka.gov.gr66
• inpi.fr66
• kanta.fi66
• medellin.gov.co66

Government Services readiness benchmark