Posted on 12/19/2014 9:53:05 AM PST by SeekAndFind
The IRS has been bled white, complained Commissioner John Koskinen.
Budget cuts to the agency, he adds, have forced the IRS to eliminate almost all overtime, implement hiring freezes, and furlough nonessential operatives. It will also likely mean a reduction in taxpayer services like audits and, yes, even the processing of refund checks. And Koskinen wants the public to know that it’s all the GOP’s fault.
“Everybody’s return will get processed,” the IRS commissioner told reporters on Thursday. “But people have gotten very used to being able to file their return and quickly get a refund. This year we may not have the resources.”
“Budget cuts backed by congressional Republicans could delay tax refunds in 2015,” The Hill reported. “Taxpayers trying to reach the IRS will have only about a 50-50 shot at getting their call answered — and those that do can expect to be on hold for awhile, Koskinen said.”
Koskinen painted a dire picture of the fallout from the $346 million cut that the IRS received in the recent year-end spending deal. Because of a government-wide pay raise next year, the IRS will have to pay out an extra $250 million in salaries and other expenses — creating in essence, Koskinen said, a $600 million hole for the agency to fill.
The Associated Press, however, reported that the IRS is largely understaffed and underfunded today as a result of the implementation of the Affordable Care Act.
“For the first time, taxpayers will have to report on their tax returns whether they have health insurance,” An AP report observed on Thursday. “Millions of taxpayers who are receiving tax credits to help pay insurance premiums will have to report them as well.”
Some Republicans in Congress have vowed to cut IRS funding as a way to hurt implementation of the health care law. Koskinen has said it won’t work.
He said the IRS is required to enforce the law, so other areas will have to be cut, including taxpayer services and enforcement.
So, the beloved IRS will blame Republicans for the taxpayer’s woes, and Republicans will blame the adored Affordable Care Act. Sounds like a recipe for a political stalemate, right?
Maybe not. A positively heartrending piece in Politico on Thursday warned of the potential for what Koskinen said was a forthcoming IRS shutdown. The commissioner tugged at heartstrings when he warned that America’s most loathed and distrusted law enforcement agency might have to reduce its workload.
“People call it furloughs; I view it as: Are we going to have to shut the place down? And at this point, that will be the last thing we do, … but there is no way we can say right now that that won’t happen,” Koskinen told reporters at a Thursday press conference on the upcoming tax season. “Again, I would stress that would be the last option.”
He said a shutdown would mean the IRS would “close the agency for a day, two days, whatever days it would take to close the gap that we can’t otherwise close in a reasonable way.”
The agency estimates each closed day would save $29 million.
Now here is a government shutdown the public can get behind.
The mammoth tax collection agency is planning on a partial shuttering of operations over a cut of $346 million. The IRS now operates on $10.9 billion, $1.5 billion less than what the White House had requested. Over this reduction in funding, the agency has to virtually close shop, cease audits and evasion investigations, and delay refunds? That will seem like a drastic course of action for any federal agency.
Moreover, according to the IRS, the tax collection agency is routinely strained to its breaking point.
“A surge in calls accompanied the rebates that Mr. Bush sponsored in 2001, straining the ability to answer calls from people with tax problems and causing other logistical problems,” read a New York Times report.
Following the release of stimulus checks in 2007, the IRS also found itself unable to process refund checks in a timely manner. “The checks will be in the mail — eventually,” The Times added.
“Compared to the 2007 Filing Season, taxpayers experienced longer wait times to speak with an assistor and spent more time on hold once they were connected to an assistor,” the Treasury Department wrote in its own defense in 2008.
While the majority of taxpayers do receive refunds, few of those refund recipients depend on that money for essentials. The often unpredictable timing of the release of those funds by the IRS prevents that kind of planning.
Given the history of the IRS’s regular struggles with refunding taxpayers and the meagerness of the budget cuts which are forcing a veritable shutdown on the agency, Koskinen’s nakedly political appeal for sympathy is directed entirely toward the press. He hopes they will forget context, eschew research, and stenograph both his pleas for empathy and his condemnation of the rotten GOP members of Congress who have robbed his agency of its proper funding.
He may find willing partners in the media, but his strategy suffers from a fatal flaw: Everyone hates the IRS.
I know people who haven’t gotten 2014 refund yet... I’m sure it’s just a coincidence they donated to the GOP.
He thinks it's a fatal flaw. But he is wrong.
Defund Koskinen and throw his ass in jail.
All this will do is foment more support for fair tax legislation.
Meanwhile, IRS office managers are doing their best to try to get all of their employees to use their vacation time during the February to May time frame (just guessing...).
Anything to try to justify “more staff”.
My son and his wife have not received their refund from last year either.
They won’t even take returns until the later part of January or the first part of February. Who the hell are they kidding here?
Maybe they could cut back on the early fraudulent returns and fraudulent EITC returns..mostly to RAT voters. Cut off returns until W-2’s are in IRS data base.
RIF 10% and cut their budget 20% immediately. See how much they complain. If they do, RIF again...and so forth. These government “workers” need to work. I call it the “3 S’s”: shower, show-up and shut-up.
RE: I know people who haven’t gotten 2014 refund yet...
Just consider that a tax increase /s
Embrace the Suck.
It says there is a $346 million cut, so in real numbers they get about the same as last year probably
The IRS needs to be disbanded. Just have small agency to make sure people do whatever is required for fair or flat ax. I’m game for just about anything else. The IRS has more than been proven to be just another political corrupt tool.
If I am due a refund and do not get it, I will just change my with holding to reflect same.
No problem.
Suck it, IRS.
I never quite understood what fool would structure his withholding form in such a way to get any refund over a few dollars. I prefer to pay a small penalty and keep my own money.
Anyone getting a refund is losing money. They are paying the IRS more than is required and are neither earning interest nor making those funds available for budgeting. It is an expensive windfall based on lazy financing on the part of the taxpayer.
John Koskinen has already perjured himself — arrest is creepy a$$.
Eliminate the IRS and all income taxes at the federal level.
Straight across the board consumption tax. No exemptions, no exceptions. Collection at final retail point of sale, just like now with state sales tax.
Retailer retains a portion of tax to cover the cost of providing the service.
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