It would appear that the partial shutdown has forced the IRS to lay off almost all of their employees considered as none essential.
A statement by Bacon & Gendrean (a tax preparation firm) informing their clients on December 28th that because of the government shutdown, “the IRS has furloughed all but 12% of its employees across the country.” Because of that, the IRS “will continue to process electronically filed and paper returns with payments” but they “will not issue any refunds.” Besides, the agency “will not perform audits or process returns requiring further examination.”
Which means for the immediate future taxpayers will not be receiving those dreaded notices in the mail regarding a calculated mistake on their filing or worse yet a previously-filed tax return audit.
However, said Bacon & Gendreau, those layoffs don’t affect “essential employees such as IRS law enforcement agents.”
Due to recent budget cuts the IRS now employs about 24,000 fewer full-time agents than it did back in 2010. The cuts bring the agency down to around 76,000 full-time employees compared to the 100,000 agents it once employed. Moreover, the 17,000 cut comes from the law-enforcement arm of the agency.
In a special 18-page report by a liberal investigative group called ProPublica cites how the IRS was gutted. The statement issued in December chronicles “An eight-year campaign to slash the agency’s budget has left it understaffed, hamstrung, and operating with old equipment. The result: billions less to fund the government. That’s good news for corporations and the wealthy.”
ProPublica also cites, “As of last year, the IRS had 9,510 auditors. That’s down a third from 2010.” And a lot of those still working are likely to take early retirement next year: “Almost a third of its remaining employees will be eligible to retire in the next year, and with morale plummeting, many of them will.”
Adding, “For the country’s largest corporations, the danger of being hit with a billion-dollar tax bill has greatly diminished, for the rich, the IRS has become less and less of a force to be feared.”
However for conservatives who witnessed and perhaps personally experienced the willful misuse of the IRS under the Obama Administration, and those IRS operatives like Lois Lerner and John Koskinen who used their collective power in directing their staff to target conservative groups seeking tax exemptions, paring down this agency and reducing their influence is a positive step in the right direction
For those who might have forgotten, it was Koskinen who hid Lerner’s emails after the scandal went public and later deleted them and then lied to congress
Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), the committee chairman, said that Koskinen “failed to comply with a Congressional issued subpoena, documents were destroyed on his watch, and the public was consistently misled.”
During a shutdown, the IRS will:
• Continue to process electronically filed returns up to the point of refunds
• Process paper tax returns with payments
• Process disaster relief transcripts
• Complete and test new computer systems and forms for the upcoming tax year
The IRS will not:
• Issue any refunds
• Process paper returns without payments
• Process amended returns
• Process non-disaster relief transcripts or Income Verification Service requests
• Perform audits or process returns requiring further examination
• Provide taxpayer services such as phone support and online functions
The IRS maintains that the filing season will open on time. Wait times for processing and services may be longer as they clear any backlog. The April deadline for filing will remain unchanged regardless of a lengthy shutdown.
