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IRS Warns of Downtime Risk As Congress Makes Cuts
dcblogs writes Successive budget cuts by Congress are forcing the Internal Revenue Service to delay system modernization that would improve its ability to prevent fraud. In telling of the problems ahead, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen almost sounded desperate in a recent memo to employees. The IRS is heavily dependent on technology, and the impact of the budget reduction to IT this year was put at $200 million. It will mean delays in replacing "aging IT systems" and "increasing the risk of downtime," Koskinen said. A new system to protect against ID theft will be delayed, and other IT cost-efficiency efforts curbed.The budget cuts have been so deep IRS employees are being warned of a possible shutdown for two days before this fiscal year ends in October. It would be a forced furlough for agency workers. The IRS employed 84,189 last year, down from 86,400 in 2013. When attrition is considered, the IRS says it lost between 16,000 and 17,000 employees since 2010. The agency has also been hit with a hiring freeze, and appears to be hiring very few people in IT compared to other agencies.
That this forces simplification of the tax code.
seems like it's time to fire IRS management and bring in/promote some fresh minds that can work under the reduced budgets.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
During the past several economically sluggish years, all across the nation, companies have figured out how to do more with less. The IRS needs that kind of leadership.
"Burn everything down, because there might be problems in the old implementation, so let's start from scratch." It's fun to think back to the time when /. wasn't filled with paranoiacs, and when working as a team to solve things wasn't seen as socialism.
Yes, I understand that you think taxes are theft. Given that the alternative is either not having civilization or living in a permanent Mexican standoff (which, one could argue, is also not having civilization), it seems like having a functional government would be something to support.
That's horrible! Just horrible. Oh, the humanity!
Actually, I'd go with 'yes, if a bit hyperbolic' on this one. Even in a hypothetical libertarian utopia, the military and police functions are deemed within the legitimate scope of the state, and not exactly expected to be paid for by donations and bake sales(in fact, the bake sales would be specifically illegitimate since they'd be a particularly feckless flavor of state industry).
And, if you must have taxation, are you actually better off with incompetent, ideosyncratic, error-prone, and potentially insecure taxation, likely focused on shaking down easy targets in order to save money, rather than aiming for greatest possible procedural uniformity? Obviously, nobody enjoys the fact that things cost money, and essentially nobody would assert that our tax code, our budget, or both(usually both) are remotely optimal; but it is vanishingly unlikely that the reforms you(or anybody else) wants are something you'll be lucky enough to get as a product of the IRS flailing around in absence of the resources to operate as designed, or the state as a whole flailing around in an attempt to deal with budget shortfalls(unexpected ones in particular).
Even the wholly serious 'starve the beast' theorists tend to be dangerously optimistic about the order in which various organs of 'the beast' will atrophy(frequently not the order they want); as well as tending to ignore the fact that, until deficit spending becomes impossible(either through political impasse over debt ceilings, or because the world at large won't buy T-bills anymore) deficit spending actually makes government-provided services more attractive(given that the US government can generally borrow with minimal difficulty and at fairly good rates, the percentage of a given project funded by debt is, at least in the short to medium term, almost indistinguishable from a pure discount. In the suitably long term, or to people who have a gnawing fear of 'debt' as a concept, this is troubling; but aside from them, deficit spending actually makes it easier to sell government programs: even fairly half-assed ideas start to look good at a suitable discount.)
For these reasons, I'd maintain that any gloating about IRS dysfunction is deeply shortsighted and (unless it is specifically helping you avoid scrutiny of your stash in the Caymans), likely even self destructive: There are many potential gains to be realized through improvements in the tax structure and budget; but it is not actually that likely that they will be realized by unsystematic institutional starvation, while the consequences of a system too dysfunctional to even administer the already problematic tax code and budget as they are written are quite unlikely to be improvements.
you idiot.
they didn't falsely attack private citizens.
they weren't an attack tool of the DNC.
they ddnt lie to congress.
the entire IRS "scandal" was manufactured from whole cloth.
enforcement of the tax code IS THEIR JOB.
when a blatantly political group tries to use a non-political category for non profit status THEY SHOULD investigate.
but guess what? Guess how many groups they investigated didn't get approved for their non profit status?
Less that 5.
And how many of those were conservative groups? 0.
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And why should you be glad that an agency gets is budget cut as punishment?
That may make sense for a toddler, but not a government agency, especially the one responsible for collecting and processing the funding for the rest of the government. Should we slash the military budget after drone strikes hit civilians? Should we gut the EPA after oil spills? Maybe we should dismantale the DOJ aftr they fail to get a conviction of walls treet bankers?
This is stupidity. But this is the GOP strategy: make it so government cant do its job, and then complain that government doesn't work.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Obama himself said the IRS did wrong, is he lying too?
The IRS told Congress that Ms. Lerner's emails were non-recoverable after 9 months of attempting. The IRS AG found backup tapes of her emails after 2 weeks of looking, with the help of the IRS IT staff. The staff he talked to was never even asked about backup tapes before. They outright lied to Congress, period.
As for the tax exempt approvals, they are to take no more than 90 days. Over a 2 year period, over 700 days, no single group with "tea party" in their name was approved or not approved so they could appeal. This was done to rig the 2012 election, and THAT is the reason their budget was cut.
Calling me names, not knowing what actually happened, and spouting DNC talking points makes the rest of us know you don't know what you are talking about on this topic.
So far, all your posts on this article have started with "you idiot," followed by punctuation-deficient word salad. Why don't you got sit at the kid's table and let the adults talk about grown-up things, okay?
One suspects that might have been the point.
The IRS already spends $300 million/year (FY2014) on this supposed "modernization," and thats down from previous years ($330 million/year for FY2012 and FY2013) So over the last decade they have blown through billions on "modernization."
With this sort of budget, they could have built several Titan supercomputers per year (in 2012 it was the fastest supercomputer ever built) and still had billions of dollars left over.
The agency actually currently blows through a total of $11.7 billion/year.
It seems to me that they already have an order of magnitude more money than they need and the problem for them is that when push comes to shove their budget could easily be cut in half several times, which if it happened would mean the big-whigs over at the IRS would suddenly lose their power to wastefully spend many billions of dollars per year. Obviously that outcome is frowned upon by those that control that money.
That some people defend this practice with statement like "Given that the alternative is either not having civilization or living in a permanent Mexican standoff " shows that those people really have no idea how much money these government agencies are spending. There is a reason that 4 of the 5 richest counties in the United States surround Washington D.C:
#1 Loudoun County, Virginia. 35 miles from D.C
#2 Howard County, Maryland. 27 miles from D.C
#3 Fairfax County, Virginia. 11 miles from D.C
#4 Hunterdon County, New Jersey. 160 miles from D.C.
#5 Arlington County, Virginia. 5 miles from D.C.
"His name was James Damore."
I'm sorry that you can't be bothered to actually read the sources that you link to. Well, actually the source you link to, as one is just a blog post. The WashPo article actually discredits your conspiracy conjecture, but since you couldn't be bothered to read it you don't know that.
Anyone with the slightest shred of common sense realizes that the IRS was doing their job. In case you have forgotten, the role of the IRS is to collect taxes. If they get an application for tax exempt status from a group that is vehemently opposed to taxation and known for making statement encouraging people to cheat on their taxes, they should put extra scrutiny on that application.
This is no different from the DEA aiming to work harder investigating NORML and other such pro-drug organizations.
In other words, find a different conspiracy for your anger. This one isn't worth shit.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
As someone with a fairly libertarian outlook, I'd like to chime in with my agreement. There is a whole raft of cuts that I'd like to make to the IRS and the tax code generally, but I'm not silly enough to think that de-funding their IT budget is going to help accomplish my goals.
You first.
Obama Administration REFUSES To Release Documents About White House Role in IRS Scandal
THOUSANDS OF DOCUMENTS: IRS Gave Taxpayer Information To White House
In 'Lost' Trove Of IRS Emails, 2,500 May Link White House To Confidential Taxpayer Data
There is plenty more digging to do, especially given the stalling by the administration.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
I'm sorry - if you (as the head of the IRS) allow the IRS to be politicized on your watch, then you will not be funded by the next Congress. It doesn't matter if you think it hasn't been politicized if enough people disagree with you. If the IRS wanted to continue as an organization, they needed to avoid even a hint of partisanship.
It doesn't take a genius here...
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I don't think anyone can make a serious argument that problems with their ability to function are desirable.
OK, here is the argument:
1) The IRS audits certain classes of people a LOT. (I've been audited almost every year for the last 5 years)
2) Normally, they don't find anything worth mentioning. But the taxpayer still had to pay for the audit.
3) So the taxpayer is out several thousand dollars, the "people" gained nothing
4) Repeated across 10 million audits, on average the "people" are gaining FAR less than is being spent by taxpayers on audits
This is a dead-weight loss to our society caused by the IRS auditing too many people. If this was a corporation, they would only audit enough to find most of the cheats - IE, to the cost effective point. But since this is government, instead they hire auditors until they run out of budget money, and audit as many people as possible regardless of actual culpability.
If the IRS lost the ability to do 90% of it's current efforts, it would be better for society.
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Yeah, that's a pretty damn stupid attitude.
"I'm sorry, nose. If you didn't want to get cut off you shouldn't have sneezed on your watch. You have only yourself to blame."
The government needs funding. We can't get rid of the IRS. We can reform it if it's corrupt, those there's really no evidence it was in recent history (the "Tea Party was targeted!!!" thing is essentially a conservative myth).
But I guess the Republicans would rather enable tax chiefs than appoint an independent auditor to make sure the agency doesn't target anyone inappropriately. Weird. Maybe the politicians are tax cheats themselves? Who knows.
vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.
Their budget got gutted because the IRS became a political attack tool of the DNC and then lied to Congress about it.
They certainly had some poor behavior but that's not why their budget got gutted, that was just the pretext. The modern Republican party A) Doesn't believe in taxes, so anything that impairs tax collection is good B) Is deliberately following a "starve the beast" strategy of shrinking government size C) Is against anything that would harm corporations or the wealthy, tax audits being a prime example D) Is not particularly enamored of the idea of "good governance" and so is willing to destroy the function of government departments in order to achieve their other objectives. I'm not particularly fond of the Democrats either, they've got their own set of problems, but that's a separate discussion.
There is plenty more digging to do, especially given the stalling by the administration.
This is the most important piece to remember.
If the Bush administration had done this, the press would be crawling all over it to "expose the corruption" of the White House. And rightly so. But since Obama is at the top of the heap now, they ignore it and call it a false story. The hypocrisy of the situation is sickening.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
This is because companies like Intuit and H&R Block lobby Congress to prevent the IRS from simply applying all the information they already have.