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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.
This was my first thought too, but it is hard to say for sure. While agencies like this are rife with waste and inefficiency, there must be a point where budget cuts would have an impact on service even if all waste and inefficiency were eliminated. Of course the same can be said of any organization to one degree or another.
My second thought was, if their budget is cut all they have to do is reduce the scope of their mission. It isn't like their victims are going to complain about not being audited. And reduction in tax revenue is meaningless since the government will simply print money to make up the difference.
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Not so fast, Cowboy. They will have the manpower to audit YOU, just not [huge-multinational-name-here].
you poor stupid idiot.
you have a non argument and no clue.
you can raise these specious "questions" but they reveal more about your own ignorance than anything of value releated to the IRS.
maybe the upgrades have been scheduled for months, predicated on projected funding, not an uncommon practice. further, no matter when the upgrades are scheduled for someone can raise the "why now?" question and have it seem important (when its really not). Its not like they only work 3 months out of the year.
and they have been talking about the problem of cuts and how it would affect them for months, ever since the congress passed the cuts.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Links? You still haven't provided them. What are you hiding?
The IRS suffering a temporary shutdown would be cause for celebration.
I'm not talking about libertarian utopias here at all. Rather, I'm saying a failure of that magnitude (a government incapable of even keeping its agency going which collects its FUNDS) would be a huge wake-up call that the current system is broken.
Discussions that might come from such a shutdown would include, "Maybe it's about time we simplify the tax code, so all of this infrastructure isn't necessary to collect taxes?"