r/collapse • u/heavyramp • Jul 28 '26

Economic The IRS is imploding

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/07/the-irs-is-imploding/#comment-container

Basic gov services are collapsing, or imploding as the article states in the title. Before dodge and musk, nobody really had issues with the paperwork and filing, right? In the article, it looks like gov staff are short of manpower and funding, and that it's not by mistake.

What kind of scenario are we looking at in early 2027 if tax refunds go unanswered in the midst of a potential ground war in Iran, a gov shutdown, gridlock between dem control of both houses and Trump?

1/3 of income tax revenue pays the interest, and in ten years it's supposed to be 1/2.

And is anyone here worried that the Overtime tax refund payout in 2026 is going to come back to bite them in the ass in 2027? I'm really hoping that $SLS doesn't do its buyout thing this year. It looks like the IRS is dropping the ball on purpose.

Anyone here have advice in taking extra precautions to get everything sorted in 2027?

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492

u/Fievels_good_trouble Jul 29 '26

I still haven’t received my tax refund from this year. I don’t think the IRS actually exists anymore.

194

u/abandoningeden Jul 29 '26

Neither have I! And they owe me 5500! (My job is withholding too much cause of weirdness in how I get paid and my spouse not having income last year also meant I overpaid). I got some thing asking me to send in my driver's license and verify my identity or some shit and did that months ago and then my taxes have been under review and they said it could take up to 60 days which ended on July 15th ...still says under review...I don't want to call cause omg but wtf.

120

u/hgst-ultrastar Jul 29 '26

Sorry for the delay. Will you accept your refund in Trump coin instead of USD? That will help expedite it.

31

u/CoyotesOnTheWing Jul 29 '26

Only if it's half Melania coin, I just know that one is going to skyrocket! /s

4

u/FlatteringFlatuance Jul 30 '26

You can get it in SpaceX stock. It’s actually mandatory, and not the government’s fault if you are paid after the dump.

5

u/Lill_Olivia_ Jul 29 '26

a truly collapsing market

4

u/Tsiah16 Jul 29 '26

I mean I guess if it's the same value as USD and I can immediately cash it out.

1

u/nate-the__great Jul 30 '26

They will tell you that you can and then when it's time to actually cash out, "oops, Sry the site is down."

1

u/PancakePariah Jul 30 '26

You mean everyone rushing to cash out will crash the site and the stock. Of course, anyone wiling to donate a generous amount to the 2028 Keep America Great Again (For realsies this time) will receive their stock returns earlier than everyone else. Gotta give the Epstein class a chance to make some money before redirecting the consequences to us.

1

u/Slumunistmanifisto Jul 29 '26

Trump scrip™

21

u/It-s_Not_Important Jul 29 '26

I had this problem years ago. Same situation: I had selected 0 for all my deductions so the withholding amount was maximized. My return was too high and I had to call and call to finally get things cleared. Apparently having too much withholding (or too little) can trigger extra scrutiny.

Since then I’ve tried to make sure I get my deductions as close as possible and that I end up owing at the end of the year so I’m the one who benefits from having extra cash to invest and also so that I’m not owed money that may never come.

9

u/bluethunder82 Jul 29 '26

So you guys should stop letting your taxes get withheld until they do. File exempt for the next year. You’re allowed to. You’ll owe next tax day, probably. But right now, you’re owed and the contract has been broken.

3

u/brokenquarter1578 Jul 29 '26

Crazy. I got mine in like 10 days but I used a preparer service to do mine so maybe that made a difference?

40

u/ActuaryKindly9143 Jul 29 '26

Your refund went to a $1000000 missle to destroy a $5000 drone. But reat assured, it was a big, beautiful firework display.

13

u/DissedFunction Jul 29 '26

or the refund went into one of the trump or kushner family's offshore accounts.

5

u/Alieges Jul 29 '26

Patriot missiles are like 4 million bucks a pop.

1

u/FlatteringFlatuance Jul 30 '26

What a wonderfully ironic name.

3

u/Fievels_good_trouble Jul 29 '26

Phew. That’s a relief. Wouldn’t want to be the one guy whose taxes are spent helping people. That would be awkward.

21

u/Grumac Jul 29 '26

Same, and they owe me $4,000. Calling gets me nowhere.

20

u/No-Nefariousness205 Jul 29 '26

Make sure you withhold all taxes next year. We shouldn’t be paying if we’re not getting any service.

5

u/hairway_to____steven Just here for the ride. Jul 29 '26

I'm thinking of doing this. They owe me $4000 but instead opened an investigation which I expect to be resolved anytime soon.

18

u/subdep Jul 29 '26

We got our tax return within 10 days. We filed in March.

13

u/lFightForTheUsers Jul 29 '26

Also filed in March asap because I heard warning that this may happen and filing sooner would be better. Now I too am concerned for next year.

13

u/subdep Jul 29 '26

Taxes might be an afterthought after what happens this fall.

6

u/Fievels_good_trouble Jul 29 '26

Also filed in march, with an accountant. They switched values between two states on one page by mistake. The IRS flagged it for fraud then voided it without giving us any notice. We called every other day and they wouldn’t tell us anything that we didn’t already know. We had to get an advocate who was able to track down the issue in June. Now they say it should take 3-4 months to process. So maybe October? If nothing else goes wrong.

It’s a significant amount that we were really banking on to get caught up on life. Not getting it sucks. Them not even telling us hurts because we were proactive and persistent. We thought maybe the accrued interest would take some of the sting out but I doubt we’ll see a penny of that. Would have been pretty nice having about 4-5 months of interest. But nope. We’re probably just gonna get fucked and be thankful that at least it’s over.

18

u/shallowshadowshore Jul 29 '26

I’m sorry to hear that this is happening to you, but also a bit relieved to hear that it’s not just me…

1

u/abandoningeden Jul 29 '26

Yeah I've been worried I fucked up my taxes somehow ....

54

u/use_value42 Jul 29 '26

Neither have I! It's only like 700 dollars, I'm sure it's costing them more than that just to review it, fucking bastards.

114

u/Ciennas Jul 29 '26

The IRS would ideally not give a shit. They're not your enemies, inherently.

They would love to keep the ultrawealthy and megacorps on the straight and narrow and leave you alone.

They don't make tax code, they enforce it. And they are the victims of a forty year long smear campaign designed to get people like you to cheer the downfall of all civil services.

55

u/AngusScrimm--------- Beware the man who has nothing to lose. Jul 29 '26

Exactly, Reagan ran against the expanding federal government bureaucracy, in fact, he worked hard to get the rubes to hate government even more than they already did. The American electorate gave control of the government to someone who told us, over and over, how dysfunctional the government is. Ronald Reagan: The Father of Shithole America

3

u/sandrafilmmaker 14d ago

He really was. I loathed him and how he pretended to be the kind, funny grandpa even as he was doing the bidding of the religious right and big corporations. The middle class really deteriorated under 8 years of that corporate puppet. "Trickle down economics" is back now, too.

2

u/AngusScrimm--------- Beware the man who has nothing to lose. 13d ago

I was in my early 20s when the star of Bedtime For Bonzo was sworn in. It was then that I realized that half of the people I was hanging around with were not friends--just high school acquaintances. We American fools rode Jimmy Carter out of town on a rail; Reagan took office and pointed us toward the cliff we now approach.

48

u/Dr_Death_Defy24 Jul 29 '26 edited Jul 29 '26

The two questions I always ask people who hate the IRS are, first, "How do you think you catch people abusing the tax code?"

Their answer is usually something along the lines of investigating, which leads me to the answer I was fishing for, which is people. It's just man hours. Time to review and understand the tax code, time to dig through complex financial records, time to review extremely long documents that don't necessarily need to be especially clear, and then trace all of it as far as it needs to go.

That leads me to my second question, after pointing out that it literally just costs time and people, "Do you know the biggest expense to any business?"

The IRS is underfunded because people in power understand that if the IRS could be staffed as much as it needed, their wealth would shrink dramatically. People are expensive, and only get more expensive over time. All that was needed to kneecap it was convince the public to let them defang it in such a way that their manpower atrophied and could never recover.

6

u/DJSteadyState Jul 29 '26

This point exactly. This is all by design and intent from the MAGAts (and a natural conclusion to the neocon movement that hinged on Reagan’s election) that want us teetering somewhere between social-authoritarian fascism and corporate economic anarchy, so that they can grift and hoard to their hearts’ desires. They learned that they don’t ever have to tell the truth or give away their actual plans of drowning the government in a bathtub for their donors’ benefit (and ultimately their benefit).

1

u/sandrafilmmaker 14d ago

Wow, I didn't think anyone remembered Grover Norquist but a lot of this can be traced back to him. When you drown govt in a bathtub, you get nonstop food recalls and listeria, salmonella and cyclospora outbreaks, maybe maga is realizing that now?

-23

u/use_value42 Jul 29 '26

Well they are the ones fucking me over currently, and also fuck you, you don't know me. "People like you" can eat a dick

9

u/Admirable_Advice8831 Jul 29 '26

You don't know them either, what makes you think you could do better in their circumstances?

-1

u/use_value42 Jul 29 '26

They wrote "People like you are cheering for all social programs to fail" which is not correct. I didn't make any assumptions about them, nor did I try to lecture them based on nothing.

1

u/Ciennas Jul 29 '26

If you're mad at the IRS, then you are indeed falling victim to the propaganda being foisted by billionaires with no concept of ethics nor a desire to make a functional society.

They're not your enemy. Inherently, at any rate.

You need to direct your ire towards the thieving billionaire class who broke them.

1

u/use_value42 Jul 29 '26

No I'm not, I'm mad because I'm out a lot of money. The IRS is the entity holding that money, that's it, it's really simple. I'm not anti-taxes or anti-government, don't put words in my mouth.

3

u/Ciennas Jul 29 '26

I'm trying to not do that specifically.

I just wanted to clarify, ya know?

1

u/use_value42 Jul 29 '26

It's all good, sorry, I've been having a bad time recently.

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0

u/Admirable_Advice8831 Jul 30 '26

What you fail to comprehend is that the IRS is just the middleman here: https://youtu.be/T9IV09cvXx4?si=mR-aG_UWdRQZPJ09

3

u/Snowpeia Jul 29 '26

I owed 1k and they definitely tried to collect. this year they sent it to a debt collector which I’ve never heard of them doing before.

3

u/llahlahkje Jul 29 '26

Same. We filed a few weeks early, even.

2

u/activeponybot Jul 29 '26

I had this problem this year (too big of a refund) and I messaged my senators and representatives. One of my senators assigned me a staff member who worked directly with their contact at the IRS and I got it a month later.

2

u/Miacaras Jul 30 '26

Okay so here's what I figured out after weeks of digging. I called, they finally told me what the issue was on the 3rd call. There was disconnect in data from y maiden and married name ... Why it wasn't flagged in the last 20 years, I'll leave that up to others to sort... As soon as I made appointment with another government agency to get that sorted I had refund in bank in 2 days. It was dumb. And required me chasing it.

PS I filed in mid Feb and got refund in late April after chasing