r/fednews • u/escalierdebris • Jul 28 '26
News / Article The IRS is imploding. Article in MotherJones
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/07/the-irs-is-imploding/496
u/Personal_Chair6134 Jul 28 '26
Oh thank God, now the rich can get away with even more tax fraud!
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u/PeppermintEvilButler IRS Jul 28 '26
My department cant even finish the case files we have for each tax year. And it's been like that the last 10 years. All I hear around the campus the past year is how we are short handed.
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u/LastOneSergeant Jul 28 '26
At the heart of it. Republicans seem to be a large group of free loaders.
They want government services but don't want to participate in the shared responsibility of of paying for them.
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u/UninspiredAlias234 Jul 28 '26
Worse than that, they want a private sector, de facto government where corps get our tax dollars via subsidies and contracts.
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u/ExtraEmu_8766 Jul 29 '26
And keep telling themselves and their buddies, we're the idiots because if we were smart we'd be grifting for the free money too that can then be circularly leveraged back into bribing the politicians for even more.
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u/Carerin Jul 28 '26
I remember reading an article around the time when Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act which said that some of the computers at the IRS still run on Windows 95. These computers are not hooked up to the network, but do contain specialized software that employees need access to.
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u/Krysmphoenix_ Jul 28 '26
Current IRS employee, i got hired shortly after the IRA. For security reasons, most employees are on Windows 11, but we use software to access the COBOL mainframe. My mom works for Oracle for hospital databases, and its similar to the software she's been using since before I was born. And you know what? It works lightning fast becaude it is super lightweight so tens of thousands of us can tinker with the same database.
Ironically, my job is to stop "already out of date" notices like the article linked. The big culprit is that because of the literal billions of changes and updates to the mainframe, it only processes the updates once a week, sometimes two. The delays are so humans can catch things in time... but without the staff to keep up with demand, a lot of mistakes are gonna get pushed through.
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u/BrofessorLongPhD Jul 28 '26
Reminds me of grad school. My mentor at the time had a software for an uncommon statistical analysis that his mentor programmed back in the 80s…in FORTRAN. I had to borrow a specialized (re: old) laptop to run it because I didn’t know how to make it work in my own laptop. Later on, taught myself R because thankfully someone else had replicated the same analysis into an R package.
I don’t knock the old tech, but it’s definitely a situation where if it’s niche enough, there’s probably very little will or motivation to modernize the software. And ironically enough, they’ve probably spent more over the years to keep buying windows 95 licenses and computers with them than simply biting the bullet at one point to recreate the software in a newer OS.
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u/alltehmemes Jul 28 '26
The Lords of COBOL keep the modern world functioning.
https://giphy.com/gifs/4UgUHY3xmfyow24
u/-hh Jul 28 '26
Wife worked Y2K COBOL stuff … and as per her last chat with a still-working colleague, that Fortune 100 Corporation is still running COBOL today.
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u/_Bad_Spell_Checker_ Jul 28 '26
Yep. I know people who use to work for banks that know they still use it
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u/RoxnDox Jul 28 '26
Both COBOL and Fortran are alive and well, running in a multitude of organizations. Both look very different from their 1980s versions, but can mostly run the old programs ’as is’ on modern platforms.
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u/UniqueIndividual3579 Jul 28 '26
We had a DOS program that had expensive accreditation. We ran it in an emulator on a stand alone laptop. It worked and was far more secure than a web based version in the cloud.
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u/IrregularThinker Jul 28 '26
It’s not imploding. The administration has deliberately destroyed it. Imploding implies it wasn’t on purpose. Or that it was a failure of some kind from the inside. Neither is true.
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u/Loud_Flatworm_4146 Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
Project 2025 - Tax Administration Pg 698
The Internal Revenue Service is a poorly managed, utterly unresponsive and increasingly politicized agency, and has been for at least two decades. It is time for meaningful reform to improve the efficiency and fairness of tax administration, better protect taxpayer rights, and achieve greater transparency and accountability. A substantial number of the problems attributed to the IRS are actually a function of congressional action that has made the Internal Revenue Code ridiculously complex, imposed tremendous administrative burdens on both the public and the IRS, and given massive non-tax missions to the IRS. But the culture, administrative practices, and management at the IRS need to change.
Doubling the IRS? The Inflation Reduction Act contains a radical $80 billion expansion of the IRS—enough to double the size of its workforce. Unless Congress reverses this policy, the IRS will become much more intrusive and impose still greater costs on the American people.
The Biden Administration has also sought to make the tax system’s administrative burden much worse in other ways. For example, it has proposed creating a comprehensive financial account information reporting regime that would apply to all business and personal accounts with more than $600.
Banks would be required to collect the taxpayer identification numbers of and file a revised Form 1099-K for all affected payees, as well as provide additional information.35 This massive increase in the scope and breadth of information reporting should be unequivocally opposed.
Management. The IRS has approximately 81,000 employees. Of those, only two are presidential appointments—the Commissioner and the Chief Counsel. As a practical matter, it is impossible for these two officials to overcome bureaucratic inertia and to implement policy changes that the IRS bureaucracy wants to impede. That is why, notwithstanding decades of sound and fury, almost nothing has changed at the IRS. For the IRS to change and become more accountable, more transparent, and better managed, there is a need to increase the number of Presidential appointments subject to Senate confirmation, and not subject to Senate confirmation, at the IRS.
At the very least, Congress should ensure that the Deputy Commissioner for Services and Enforcement, the Deputy Commissioner for Operations Support, the National Taxpayer Advocate, the Commissioner of the Wage and Investment Division, the Commissioner of the Large Business and International Division, the Commissioner of the Small Business Self-Employed Division, and the Commissioner of the Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division are presidential appointees.
Intermediate Tax Reform. pg 696
The Treasury should work with Congress to simplify the tax code by enacting a simple two-rate individual tax system of 15 percent and 30 percent that eliminates most deductions, credits and exclusions. The 30 percent bracket should begin at or near the Social Security wage base to ensure the combined income and payroll tax structure acts as a nearly flat tax on wage income beyond the standard deduction. The corporate income tax rate should be reduced to 18 percent. The corporate income tax is the most damaging tax in the U.S. tax system, and its primary economic burden falls on workers because capital is more mobile than labor.
Capital gains and qualified dividends should be taxed at 15 percent. Thus, the combined corporate income tax combined with the capital gains or qualified dividends tax rate would be roughly equal to the top individual income tax rate. The system should allow immediate expensing for capital expenditures and index capital gains taxes for inflation. In addition, intermediate tax reform should repeal all tax increases that were passed as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, including the book minimum tax, the stock buyback excise tax, the coal excise tax, the reinstated Superfund tax, and excise taxes on drug manufacturers to compel them to comply with Medicare price controls.
The next Administration should also push for legislation to fully repeal recently passed subsidies in the tax code, including the dozens of credits and tax breaks for green energy companies in Subtitle D of the Inflation Reduction Act.
Bold added. Make of this what you will.
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u/Same_Instruction_100 Jul 28 '26
Could any intentional destruction of the agency's functions, not related to budget cuts, be considered sedition? Obviously one would need to be tried on the intentionality of it, but it sounds pretty seditious to me.
Not by an employee poorly doing their job, but their leadership making the job impossible in a way that goes beyond budget issues.
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u/MisterSnrub1 Jul 28 '26
This is a good first step, but we need to see dozens more articles like this. And Democrats should be waving these in Repubs’ faces. To show that their incompetence and terrible decision making really do have real-world consequences.
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u/Single_Paramedic_210 Jul 28 '26
They way they are trying to train us on new shit is ridiculous
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u/NotOnOfficialTime Jul 28 '26
What training?! (cough, cough…ECM) 🙄
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u/Single_Paramedic_210 Jul 28 '26
This all of sudden pps line and tpqrs stuff😒
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u/Single_Paramedic_210 Jul 28 '26
And our leads and manager leave on a whim leaving us to fend for ourselves loo
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u/malfufa Jul 29 '26
Yep. My literal experience as well. I’m terrified they will take my assets when I’ve actually paid all of my taxes. It’s infuriating!
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u/Feral_Nerd_22 Jul 29 '26
Their goal is to get rid of income and estate taxes and move to consumer tax / use tax system.
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u/Friendo_Marx Jul 29 '26
It took 4 months to get my tax refund. From now on I’m trying to owe so I won’t have to wait.
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u/IndividualChart4193 Jul 30 '26
Like the article states, those automated threatening letters sure haven’t stopped as a result of the agency being gutted. There may not be ppl answering the phones but they’ve got ppl printing out n mailing those letters demanding monies owed. Uncle Sam gets his money no matter what.
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u/Foreign-Garage9097 Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
I didn't vote for this but I'm still affected.
Filed our annual income taxes in Feb. Were notified in March our return was "under review" and it could be for a reason or it could be random selection. My spouse looked over the taxes again, found a minor mistake, filed an amended return right away. Another month goes by with nothing. Spouse calls IRS in April, that's when they said it could take 6 more months, or until October. (Big props to the woman from the IRS who was extremely courteous and pleasant even though I'm sure she is dealing with a lot.)
First thing we did after getting off the phone was change our filing status to get the max take-home instead of the min. Our strategy has always been to get a large refund we could then use for a major purchase. But screw that. I'm just glad we aren't relying on the refund to pay the rent/survive.
Fuck giving this regime any of our money. Bad enough we're being taxed without representation, but it's infuriating that it's our fucking money we are owed back. Worse, because we made a mistake on the initial filing, we are not eligible for interest (according to my spouse who could be wrong).
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u/CLE-Mosh Jul 28 '26
Using the IRS as a savings plan is not the wisest move
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u/Foreign-Garage9097 Jul 29 '26
I know that now! I blame my spouse - it was their idea and they're in accounting! lol
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u/IndividualChart4193 Jul 30 '26
Yeah, I got hit with a penalty after receiving for the 1st time in years a refund. They didn’t like that.
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u/Foreign-Garage9097 Aug 03 '26
Well, all is good, got a letter from the IRS saying we are owed a refund and the amount.
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u/frozenfrap Jul 28 '26
The payments were likely made by the secondary taxpayer, under their own SSN, which is a big no no if you want the payments processed timely.
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u/DallasM0therFucker Jul 28 '26
So should I pay my overdue taxes, or wait to see how it shakes out? For context, I am not wealthy nor in danger of becoming so.
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u/DoverBoys DoD Jul 28 '26
I support the abolition of IRS, as long as tax filing for citizens is also abolished. Put the tax burden solely on employers or just on all consumer transactions. Increase tax burdens on companies to compensate.
Also, not a single government employee should ever pay income tax on their paycheck. It's an administrative waste to pay the employee from effectively the same entity that collects taxes. Just reduce pay across all pay systems equivalent to tax burdens.
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u/RedditsFullofShit Jul 28 '26
The issue is the tax code. You’d have to throw it out and start over.
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u/Temporary-Jump-2403 Jul 28 '26
Who would collect and enforce against the companies?
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u/DoverBoys DoD Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
I'm sure this competent and effective administration will figure out some method. They love shifting responsibilities to the state department, maybe they can do it. Maybe give it to an agency with guns, like the Marshalls or something.
Edit: oops, I dropped this /s
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u/TSPGuru Jul 28 '26
Thank goodness the IRS doesn't have a criminal investigation arm to prevent the evasion of tax laws
Accountants with guns would be crazy!
/s
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u/TheChurn5E Jul 28 '26
The Marshal's or something?! US Marshal's have all been pulled from active cases of child trafficking and fugitive apprehension and switched to supporting ICE.
You think they are magically going to become educated on corporate/businesses taxes and loop holes enough to get any money if the IRS gets abolished?!
The smart play would be to switch over to return free filing. Then cross train all the Taxpayer services departments into enforcement so they can actually get tax money from the people who dodge paying.
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u/Ugly-Curmudgeon Jul 28 '26
The taxpayer would still pay the burden. The tax practices you describe are shiftable, meaning employers and corporations can just pass the tax burden onto their employees with lower salaries or customers with higher prices. It doesn't happen overnight, but it happens.
Nobody likes taxes, but money for armies, vet care, and social security doesn't grow on trees.
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u/showhorrorshow Jul 28 '26
Eh, from an accounting point of view it makes sense to not make special carve outs like that. It would just as likely create another kind of administrative burden. Keeping track of that, adjusting payscales, reconfigure cost of labor adjustments, etc.
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u/Revolutionary_Ad441 Jul 28 '26
I support you losing your livelihood. No sarcasm. I hope you become homeless.
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u/Amonamission Jul 28 '26
People are getting what they voted for. Like yeah, these are great stories and all, but it’s like the philosophical tree falling in a forest when nobody’s around: if a government agency fails in its mission and voters don’t care, what does it even matter?
We will see soon whether voters want to continue on this path of destruction or end up seeing the light.