Bloomberg Business will have a typically timed IRS cover story this Friday, right before tax day, proclaiming "The IRS Sucks." But the subhead is a clue that this might not be your typical lament on how horrible the agency is: "If you think paying your taxes is bad, try working at America's most unloved agency." And it features one of those workers:
A 16-year IRS veteran, [Candace] Gaddy wishes she could share some of her own IRS troubles with her visitors. Her salary has risen only 2 percent in the last four years. The center lost its secretary and hasn’t replaced her because of a four-year-old hiring freeze throughout the agency, which means Gaddy and the remaining employees handle clerical duties, too. One of her fellow specialists spends all his time now answering questions via webcam from taxpayers in Harrisburg, Pa., because that office is short-staffed. Last year, to reduce the lines, the IRS discontinued its practice of preparing simple tax returns as a courtesy for people, many of them elderly. But in Philadelphia the queues have stayed the same or grown longer, because so many people come in with questions about tax credits for Obamacare and what to do to prevent identity thieves from stealing their refunds.
Staffing at IRS offices hasn't just been frozen, the agency has lost 11 percent of its employees since Republicans took over the House in 2010 and refused to pass any budgets or any continuing resolutions that didn't have massive cuts. "Since the GOP won control of the chamber in 2010, the agency’s annual budget has fallen by $1.2 billion, to $10.9 billion in 2015." That also means a nearly 20 percent drop in criminal investigations from 2013 to 2014. It means "at least 46,000 fewer audits," because they've lost 2,200 auditors since 2013. With each auditor expected to generate $1.2 million a year, that's $2.64 billion lost. Yes, very fiscally responsible.
"I buy my own pens," says Catherine Ficco, a revenue officer in West Nyack, N.Y. "I buy my own clips and hole punchers and things of that nature. It's not uncommon. There's no money to order supplies or paper for my printer."
But it also means that 40 percent of people who call the IRS this year to get help won't get it, the IRS says, because there just aren't enough staff to answer all the calls. The IRS isn't alone among agencies in the federal government that have to do a lot of customer service, and have been cut to the bone by House Republicans. Social Security has been under a hiring freeze since 2010, and has lost 14 percent of its field staff—the people in the local offices who help people do everything from getting new Social Security cards to applying for disability to figuring out death benefits. Wait times for customers at Social Security have increased by 40 percent. Just as Republicans intended. They want you to hate government and they want you to hate government programs—particularly Social Security. How better to make you hate government than to make your essential interactions with it—death and taxes—miserable. So when you're on hold with the IRS in the waning hours of April 14, remember that it's the Republicans' fault, and not the IRS's.