Enrolled Agent Exam Pass Rate 2026: No Official Rate

There is no official IRS Enrolled Agent exam pass rate. Neither the IRS nor PSI Services — the vendor that took over the Special Enrollment Examination (SEE) on March 1, 2026 — publishes a pass rate for the exam or for any of its three parts, and neither the current Candidate Information Bulletin nor the IRS's own enrollment page contains pass-rate data of any kind. Every percentage circulating in 2026 as "the EA pass rate" therefore comes from somewhere other than the two organizations that write and score the test, and most of it describes a program a different vendor used to run on a different score scale.

That sounds like a dead end, but it isn't. The SEE publishes an unusual amount of detail about how it is scored and exactly how many questions land on each topic — numbers that tell you more about your odds than a rate ever would.

How the SEE is really scored

The SEE is three separate exams, taken in any order. Each part is 100 multiple-choice questions, and each part gives you 3.5 hours. Only 85 of those 100 questions count. The other 15 are experimental items distributed through the exam and never identified, and they "will not be counted for or against you in your final examination score."

Your 85 scored answers are not reported as a percentage. The bulletin states that scaled scores are "determined by calculating the number of questions answered correctly from the total number of questions in the examination and converting them to a scale that ranges from 200 to 800," and that "the IRS has set the scaled passing score at 500."

Parts	Three: SEE1 Individuals; SEE2 Businesses; SEE3 Representation, Practices and Procedures
Questions per part	100 multiple choice
Scored questions	85 (15 unscored experimental items)
Time per part	3.5 hours, excluding tutorial and survey
Score scale	200 to 800
Passing scaled score	500
If you pass	Report shows a passing designation only — no score
If you fail	Report shows a scaled score between 200 and 500, plus diagnostics
Fee	$317 per part
Attempts	Up to four per part per test window
Test window	July 1, 2026 to February 28, 2027 (no testing in March or April)
Carryover	A passed part counts for three years from the date you passed it
Law tested	As amended through December 31, 2025; questions relate to calendar year 2025
Prerequisite	Preparer Tax Identification Number (PTIN)

Why 500 is not a percentage

This is where the pages currently ranking for this query go wrong. A scaled score is not a share of questions answered correctly, and converting one into a percentage produces a number that means nothing. Four reasons:

• The scale floor is 200, not zero. A candidate who answers every question wrong does not score 0 — they score 200. A scale that starts at 200 cannot be read as a percentage of anything.
• The raw-to-scaled conversion is never published. Nowhere does the IRS or PSI say how many of the 85 scored questions produce a 500. Without that, no percentage can be derived from the passing score.
• Fifteen of your questions don't count. Even your own tally of answers you felt good about is measured against the wrong denominator, because you cannot tell scored items from experimental ones.
• Passing candidates never see a number. The bulletin is explicit that a passing report shows a designation, not a score, because "all score values above passing indicate that a candidate is qualified — not how qualified."

Why the figures online disagree

The biggest reason is that the exam changed hands this year. The IRS states plainly: "Effective March 1, 2026, the IRS Enrolled Agent Special Enrollment Exam (EA-SEE) is no longer developed and administered by Prometric, LLC. A new vendor, PSI Services, has been selected to develop and administer the exam."

That single sentence invalidates most of the EA pass-rate content on the web. Any per-part rate you find was produced under the previous vendor, against the previous item bank, on the previous score scale. It is not a forecast of your odds on a PSI-developed 2026 exam, and neither the IRS nor PSI has published a rate for the current program.

The scoring change is the clearest tell that a page is out of date. The number most articles still print as the SEE passing score is 105, a figure that appears nowhere in the current Candidate Information Bulletin. The passing score on the 2026 exam is a scaled 500 on a 200-to-800 scale. Any page still quoting 105 — or converting it into a tidy-looking percentage — is describing scoring rules that no longer apply.

Unofficial rates share the usual defects too: they rarely say which test window they cover, or whether they count attempts or candidates. Because you may sit a part up to four times in a single window, attempt-level and candidate-level rates for the SEE can differ dramatically while both being technically true.

What separates passing from failing candidates

The published content outlines are the most useful planning document available, because they give the exact number of scored questions per topic — not a vague percentage weight. All three parts total 85 scored questions.

Part 1 — Individuals
Preliminary work and taxpayer data	14
Income and assets	17
Deductions and credits	17
Taxation	15
Advising the individual taxpayer	11
Specialized returns for individuals	11
Part 2 — Businesses
Business entities and considerations	30
Business tax preparation	37
Specialized returns and taxpayers	18
Part 3 — Representation, Practices and Procedures
Practices and procedures	26
Representation before the IRS	25
Specific areas of representation	20
Filing process	14

Part 2 is a different kind of exam. Look at the shape of it. Part 1 spreads 85 questions across six topic areas, so no single subject can sink you. Part 2 spreads the same 85 across only three, and 67 of them sit in business entities and business tax preparation alone. There is nowhere to hide. A candidate weak on partnership basis, S corporation distributions, or depreciation is not losing a few questions on Part 2 — they are losing a bloc large enough to decide the result.

Part 3 rewards rules, not judgment. Fifty-one of its 85 scored questions fall in practices and procedures and representation before the IRS. This is Circular 230 territory: who may practice, what powers of attorney do, how appeals and collection processes run. It is memorizable in a way Part 2 is not, which makes it a sensible second sitting: bank a pass while you build the business-tax work that Part 2 demands.

Studying the wrong tax year fails people who knew the material. For exams taken between July 1, 2026 and February 28, 2027, every reference is to the law "as amended through December 31, 2025," and questions relate to calendar year 2025. Last year's review course, or a thread quoting figures from a later bill, will hand you confidently wrong answers.

The three-year clock can end an attempt the exam never did. Each passed part carries over for three years from the date you passed it. Candidates who pass Part 1, stall on Part 2, and drift lose the Part 1 credit and start over. Testing is also closed in March and April every year while the exam is updated, so a stalled candidate loses two months of runway they may not have budgeted for.

The bottom line

Stop hunting for an EA pass rate. It does not exist in any form the IRS or PSI stands behind, and the per-part figures that rank for the query were generated under a vendor that no longer administers the exam. What you can plan against is fully published: 85 scored questions per part, 3.5 hours, a 200-to-800 scale with a passing score of 500, four attempts per window, $317 a part, and a topic-by-topic question count that tells you Part 2 packs 67 of its 85 scored items into two subjects. Treat the passing score as a standard to clear rather than a percentage to compute, front-load business taxation, and protect the three-year carryover window.

The most reliable way to find out where you stand is to answer questions under time pressure and see which topic blocs collapse — start with a free IRS Enrolled Agent Exam practice test and use the content outline above to decide what to fix first.

Official numbers that matter more than an estimated pass rate

The figures below come from the official source documents linked in the table. They are included so you can make study and registration decisions from published requirements rather than an unsupported estimate.

Published detail	Value	Official source
Achieve passing scores on all three parts of the SEE within three years.	3 years to pass all parts	Internal Revenue Service (IRS)
Obtain a minimum of 16 hours per year (2 of which must be on ethics)	minimum 16 hours per year, 2 of them ethics	Internal Revenue Service (IRS)
Obtain 72 hours (66 hours of qualifying CE and 6 hours of ethics) every three years based on your renewal cycle	72 hours of CE every 3 years (66 qualifying + 6 ethics)	Internal Revenue Service (IRS)
Apply for enrollment and pay enrollment fee electronically using Pay.gov Form 23 or by downloading Form 23, Application for Enrollment to Practice Before the Internal Revenue Service PDF and mailing the completed form and a check to the IRS.	enrollment is via Form 23 with fee, electronically on Pay.gov or by mail	Internal Revenue Service (IRS)
An enrolled agent is a person who has earned the privilege of representing taxpayers before the Internal Revenue Service by either passing a three-part comprehensive IRS test covering individual and business tax returns, or through experience as a former IRS employee.	3 parts	Internal Revenue Service (IRS)