Big Balls’ Mommy must be proud tonight.
(Certainly she’s the one who taught him to Move Fast and Break Things.)
Josh Marshall reports from Talking Points Memo:
IRS Predicts DOGE Lost Half a Trillion Dollars for the USA
The Post reports today that the IRS’s internal projections estimate that the DOGE-driven disruptions to the IRS since the inauguration are on track to have reduced tax receipts by more than $500 billion by April 15th. This, to be clear, is not a final tally.
TPM
I don’t have access to the Washington Post, which seems to be the main and only source of this right now as everyone’s pointing back to them.
Taxpayer behavior has changed since President Donald Trump took office and implemented sweeping federal cuts through Elon Musk’s DOGE. As a result, the IRS has “noticed an uptick of online chatter from individuals declaring their intention to not pay taxes this year,” the Washington Post reports, citing three people with knowledge of tax projections.
It added that individuals were “wagering that auditors will not examine their accounts” amid DOGE’s plans to downsize the IRS by nearly 20 percent by May 15.
The Independent
UPDATE: Adding this article from ProPublica back on March 5. This article delves into some of the reasons why cutting employees at the IRS has the opposite effect of the stated intended purpose. They interviewed over a dozen current and former IRS employees for the article.
In late February, the Trump administration began firing more than 6,000 IRS employees. The agency has been hit especially hard, current and former employees said, because it spent 2023 preparing to hire thousands of new enforcement and customer service personnel and had only started hiring and training those workers at any scale in 2024, meaning many of those new employees were still in their probationary period. Nershi was hired as part of this wave, in the spring of last year. The boost came after Congress had underfunded the agency for much of the past decade, which led to chronic staffing shortages, dismal customer service and plummeting audit rates, especially for taxpayers who earned $500,000 or more a year.
The administration doesn’t appear to want to stop there. It is drafting plans to cut its entire workforce in half, according to reports.
Unlike with other federal agencies, cutting the IRS means the government collects less money and finds fewer tax abuses. Economic studies have shown that for every dollar spent by the IRS, the agency returns between $5 and $12, depending on how much income the taxpayer declared. A 2024 report by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found that the IRS found savings of $13,000 for every additional hour spent auditing the tax returns of very wealthy taxpayers — a return on investment that “would leave Wall Street hedge fund managers drooling,” in the words of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
ProPublica
UPDATE: Adding CNN Article from March 15.
This gets into the specific actions taken by DOGE in recent weeks.
‘‘Delete’ is one of their favorite terms’: Inside DOGE’s IRS takeover ahead of tax season
Within minutes of showing up, a twenty-something software engineer dispatched from DOGE began demanding access to the tax collection agency’s most protected internal databases – first the IT systems and then one containing the personal and financial data for millions of American taxpayers and another system housing IRS contracts.
Another DOGE staffer sought to shut down nearly all of IRS’s congressionally funded programs and initiatives planned for this fiscal year – many aimed at modernizing the agency and improving the tax filing process.
****
As soon as Corcos got there, one IRS employee told CNN, he pushed to a halt nearly all the agency’s congressionally funded programs and initiatives it was planning for fiscal year and calendar year 2025. The employee told CNN Corcos was making the demand without “fully understanding how the agency works within the federal government.”
“They’ll come in and say we’re going to delete that initiative– ‘delete’ is one of their favorite terms,” said the IRS employee. “So, we are scrambling to figure out ‘Does Sam have that authority? Does Gavin have that authority? Did Treasury give them that authority?’”
CNN
Josh summed up his short piece:
In other words, in about eight weeks DOGE managed to lose the US government, more or less light fire, more than half of what goes to all non-defense discretionary spending.
(TPM link above)
Way to go, Dog-E boys!
“Who’s not a good boy? That’s right, you’re not a good boy!”
Other Factors
It’s also mentioned that the fires here in LA may delay payments as people in these zones can delay payment.
WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service announced today tax relief for individuals and businesses in parts of California affected by wildfires and straight-line winds that began on Jan. 7, 2025. These taxpayers now have until Oct. 15, 2025, to file various federal individual and business tax returns and make tax payments.
Internal Revenue Service website
Bias for Action
Among tech companies, one of the principles baked into company purpose is a Bias for Action.
What is Bias for Action?
Amazon is known for moving fast, and Jeff Bezos has made it clear that this speed comes from Bias for Action. The Amazon founder says “I believe you can make good decisions without having all the information if you’re willing to communicate what you know, listen to others, and iterate. This approach is not foolproof… but at Amazon, we’re willing to be ‘foolish’ to do something new”.
Bias for Action means that you need to be decisive, take action, and make decisions quickly.
Here are some key points about this leadership principle:
Decisive action beats procrastination. The Bias for Action is about moving decisively forward, without waiting on perfect information or the perfect plan.
Make decisions quickly. When you have information, act on it. Don’t sit on decisions or ideas until they’re perfect, because they’ll never be perfect.
Change course if needed. The best-laid plans can change at any time in a growing business. Be willing to accept this fact and adjust your actions accordingly.
Keep moving forward no matter what happens!
Tech Interview Coaching website
In my work in the area of disability accessibility, this bias for action is a big part of why and how accessible features keep getting left out and/or fall behind in planning stages.
Bias for Deliberation
The answer, of course, is nearly unheard of: Bias for Deliberation and respect for Risk Planning and such. The impatience with which people fighting to “innovate” and “disrupt” treat basic human knowledge about the complexities of systems, such as the tech interface/human interface issues, cause them to treat any additional knowledge, such as, “This doesn’t work because….” as antithetical to progress.
It is, afterall, better to disrupt than be disrupted!
Bias for Comprehending Effects
It has been soul crushing.
Here we’re seeing writ large across our government the bull in the china shop nature of this kind of thinking.
Alas.
Please add any appropriate tags.
Be safe.
