We previously posted on Wednesday, October 8, 2014, IRS Examinations Decrease Due to Staff Cuts where we discussed that the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) released its annual report on IRS compliance trends on September 12, 2014. Now the Washington Post wrote an article regarding what's really going on at the IRS. For several years, the IRS has been laboring under more expensive mandates but with fewer resources.
Since 2010, when Congress first began hacking away at discretionary spending, the bureau’s funding has fallen 14 percent, in inflation-adjusted terms, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Its staff has also shrunk by about 10,400 employees, or 11 percent, over the same period. These cuts have come even though the agency’s responsibilities and workload have increased, thanks to new laws such as the Affordable Care Act and the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, as well as the growing problems of identity theft and tax refund fraud.
Now House Republicans want to hobble it even more. Last week, the House Appropriations Committee voted to slash the bureau’s budget by another $340 million.
For every dollar appropriated to the IRS in the 2013 fiscal year, the agency collected $255, according to the national taxpayer advocate’s office.
So let's stop treating the IRS as a political ragdoll and let's give it the appropriate funding so they can do their job correctly!
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