Do you need help filling out your IRS forms this year due to new tax rules being added to the books? It turns out that if you need to get ahold of the IRS for any reason this year, you might be out of luck.
According to the IRS, over a hundred million people are expected to call in this year with questions about their taxes, but only about half of those calls will be able to be answered.
“Taxpayers who need help are not getting it, and tax compliance is likely to suffer over the longer term if these problems are not quickly and decisively addressed,” said a report Wednesday by agency watchdog Nina E. Olson.
The IRS blames these administrative shortage on the recent cuts to their budget, which were passed this past September.
“It couldn’t be worse timing,” Koskinen said of the budget cuts.
Congress cut the IRS by $346 million for the budget year that ends Sept. 30. Koskinen says the agency’s $10.9 billion budget is its lowest since 2008. When adjusted for inflation, the budget hasn’t been this low since 1998, he said.
In September, House Republicans sought the 15% budget cut from the IRS to punish the agency for its complicity in the scandal to target conservative groups, spending lavish amounts of money on employee conferences, and its willingness to usher in the implementation of Obamacare.
The funding is part of a larger $21 billion bill for several agencies including the IRS, Treasury Department and Securities and Exchange Commission. Noting that it cuts $2.3 billion from the president’s overall request, Chairman Hal Rogers said, “the bill focuses cuts on lower-priority or poor-performing agencies, such as the scandal-plagued and inefficient Internal Revenue Service.”
It is unclear whether the administrative inefficiencies are actually due to the cuts made by Congress as the agency suggests, though. As past reports have shown, the IRS has been rife with inefficiency and failures, even with the $346 million still residing within the budget.
Just this past year, a report showed that the IRS was found to have overpaid the nationwide earned income tax credit by $132 billion over the last decade, and has failed to reign in those overpayments.
It seems that the inefficiency of the IRS may not stem from a lack of funding, but rather from a severe lack of administrative and congressional oversight.
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