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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.