Once again, taxpayers are being abused by Obama’s IRS

Absolute Rights ^ | 4/23/15 | Jon Dougherty

[markomalley]

The hits against Americans by the Internal Revenue Service, which has been weaponized under the tutelage of the most authoritarian regime in U.S. history, continues unabated, this time with an abuse of taxpayer money that should get your blood boiling.

As most of us know tax season is upon us, and despite the passage of April 15 – the annual deadline for filing last year’s taxes – millions are still struggling to get their returns completed.

Many are frustrated simply because they can’t get through to the IRS, which is supposed to be there to lend assistance to taxpayers so they can comply with filing requirements.

As noted by ABC News:

The IRS’ overloaded phone system hung up on more than 8 million taxpayers this filing season as the agency cut millions of dollars from taxpayer services to help pay to enforce President Barack Obama’s health law.

For those who weren’t disconnected, only 40 percent actually got through to a person. And many of those people had to wait on hold for more than 30 minutes, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said Wednesday.

But don’t worry, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer: The IRS was at least taking care of itself and its allies.

According to a just-released House report, even though the agency faced budget cuts which forced some cuts to taxpayer services, the agency nevertheless prioritized worker bonuses, union activity and the implementation of President Obama’s health care law above helping taxpayers during the busiest portions of tax season.

The report, by the House Ways and Means Committee – the panel charged with writing tax law – was released in advance of a subcommittee hearing Wednesday morning featuring IRS Commission John Koskinen, master of the artful dodge. At the hearing the lifelong federal bureaucrat kept stressing that his agency is tapped on funds and as such, those cuts come with consequences. Only if the agency receives more money will it be able to improve service, he promised.

“Customer service — both on the phone and in person — has been far worse than anyone would want. It’s simply a matter of not having enough people to answer the phones and provide service at our walk-in sites as a result of cuts to our budget,” he said.

Republicans on the panel argued that part of the problem is that the agency was simply making bad spending choices.

“I would just suggest to you that there’s hardly a person in America today that isn’t doing more with less, that hasn’t tightened their belt and learned how to work with less,” Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., said, as reported by Fox News.

Since 2010 the agency has faced congressional budget cuts of $1.2 billion. Still, in recent years, the agency found enough time and resources to systematically target and abuse Tea Party-affiliated organizations that were trying to get tax-exempt status in the run-up to the 2012 elections. There have also been reports of additional wasteful spending.

The committee’s new report said the cuts were intended to “force the IRS to manage its resources more effectively and immediately stop inappropriate activities” – not self-reward and spend foolishly on non-customer service-related activities.

Though cuts were made in part to focus the agency on customer service, the report asserted that “spending decisions entirely under the IRS’s control led to 16 million fewer taxpayers receiving IRS assistance this filing season.”

Fox News further reported:

The panel found the IRS had cut customer services while continuing to hand out bonuses to employees, allowing staff to conduct union activities, failing to collect debt owed by employees of the federal government and spending over $1.2 billion on implementing ObamaCare.

Despite the fact that the IRS’s budget for taxpayer assistance did not increase much from year 2014 to 2015, the level of over-the-phone customer service significantly decreased, as the agency shifted staff in customer service to focus on written correspondence instead of telephone calls.

Meanwhile, the number of calls doubled in that period; the panel found that wait times increased from 18.7 minutes to 34.4 minutes, and answered calls decreased from 6.6 million to 5.3 million.

“In January 2015, the IRS commissioner estimated that taxpayer service would decline while delays in tax refunds would increase. While the IRS commissioner has blamed this solely on budget cuts, in reality the IRS deliberately diverted resources away from taxpayer services,” the report found.

But as customer service fell, employee bonuses and the like remained the same – essentially turning them into rewards for worse service. And you thought only Amtrak was rewarded with taxpayer money for poor service.

Notably, in November 2014, despite another round of budget cuts at the IRS, Koskinen announced that employees would receive bonuses at the same level as for the previous year, unless they had substantiated conduct issues, the report said.

What a boss!

In addition, as the agency was acknowledging that has cut the amount of time spent on discretionary union activity, the House report questioned why it could not have been decreased even further. The report claims that “the amount of resources spent on discretionary union activity could have assisted nearly 2.5 million taxpayers.”

Finally, the report noted that while the IRS’s implementation of ObamaCare was deemed a success by Koskinen, “the IRS achieved this supposed success by prioritizing … implementation over other activities, including core responsibilities like taxpayer assistance.”

The current field of 2016 GOP presidential hopefuls have taken on the issue of tax reform, with candidates ranging from decreasing top rates to implementing a flat tax to getting rid of the IRS altogether (at least in its present form). Anything would be better than the weaponized, self-serving, Obamacare enforcement agency it has become.

[Diogenesis]

The EXEMPT: "WE support each and every IRS attack
against conservatives and the TEA Party."

[Minutemen]

That’s what you get for expecting the IRS to “help you”.