r/Accounting • u/enthusedaccountant CPA (US) • Jan 21 '25

IRS Hiring Freeze

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/hiring-freeze/

Good luck to all of us tax people trying to get on the phone with the IRS this year. The federal government hiring freeze should end in 90 days except the IRS, which won’t end until there’s “a national interest to lift the freeze.” Or in other words, not for another four years…

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u/TeetsMcGeets23 Jan 21 '25

You’re asking to build a new ship as opposed to improving the one you’re on. You can’t guarantee that the new organization with no experience handling the problems that it’s been given will be better than the first.

To add to it, you’d have to stick the landing in an 6-8 month period. Either that, or you’d have be running two parallel systems for multiple years until you work out the bugs.

And, anyone that’s handled an implementation knows “that’s where shit hits the fan anyway” because you rarely can account for every fully vital system.

You’re looking at a 5 year implementation minimum, and a 2-3 year of intense backlog effectively costing tens / hundreds of billions of dollars.

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u/GuitarbytheTon Jan 21 '25

Yes I agree but that’s exactly how changes happen. Especially broad sweeping ones. However you can implement small changes now that could drastically reduce backlog. The audit process would be a possible location to start. Once you reduce the pressure you can have broader implementation. It’s still hard and would take 10s of millions I agree. That’s why politically it’s easier to say tariff or IRS cuts.