Posted on 04/26/2015 9:31:58 AM PDT by John Semmens
IRS Commissioner John Koskinen acknowledged that the number of employees assigned to assist taxpayers understand and file tax returns for 2014 was “less than it could’ve been.” Statistics bear out his assessment. It is estimated than less than half of those who phoned the IRS to ask for help actually got through. And of those who did many waited on hold for more than 30 minutes before speaking to an IRS agent.
Koskinen defended the shortage of taxpayer help, saying that “we had higher priorities. For one, we had to implement the penalty enforcement phase of the Affordable Care Act. This new responsibility consumed resources that previously were allocated to the taxpayer help line.”
The reallocation of resources away from taxpayer help to enforcing Obamacare aggravated problems caused by previous years’ reallocation of resources to the investigation and prevention of conservative organizations from obtaining tax exemptions in the run up to the 2012 elections.
“We can’t do everything on the limited budget we have,” Koskinen complained. “We have to decide what’s important and what isn’t. Babysitting taxpayers while they grapple with tax forms wasn’t important compared to the other needs we faced. If taxpayers find our forms too difficult—well, that’s what commercially available tax preparation services like H&R Block are for.”
if you missed any of this week's other semi-news/semi-satire posts you can find them at...
http://azconservative.org/2015/04/25/house-speaker-pleads-for-hillary-to-turn-over-computer-server/
I always wonder how old Koskinen really is because I had his brother as a thermodynamics prof back in the late 60s and the brother wasn’t exactly young then.
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