Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
Not so fast, Cowboy. They will have the manpower to audit YOU, just not [huge-multinational-name-here].
That this forces simplification of the tax code.
Since when does the IRS decide what the Federal Tax laws are?
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
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.
--
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.
In other countries, the government collects payroll information and prepares a tax statement for each citizen. People review the tax bill and pay if they owe money. Or they amend any information on income and pay the recalculated payment.
In the US, citizens are made to calculate their tax responsibility, or hire someone to do it. The government then tells them if they have their calculation correct with threat of penalty if done incorrectly.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Inquiry Into I.R.S. Lapses Shows No Links to White House
Now piss off.
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
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.
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?"
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.
It's even more innocuous than that. The IRS was targeting political groups who applied for 501(c)(3) charity status to make sure they really qualified, because there are restrictions on how political your mission can be if you try to qualify as a charity under 501(c)(3). They targeted both Tea Party and progressive groups because, guess what, those groups tend to engage in potentially prohibited political activity as part of their missions.
They actually targeted more left-leaning than right-leaning groups for scrutiny, but all anyone ever whines about is how The Government oppressed those poor tea partiers.
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.