The IRS, the most disliked government agency in the United States by nearly a 30 point margin, is about to see its ratings slip even deeper.
According to IRS Commisioner John Koskinen, budget cuts this year are going to make filing your taxes even more awful. Funding for the IRS, which is the face of all tax collection duties of the federal government, was cut by $346 million.
For comparison, that returns the agency’s operating budget to its 2008 levels which, when adjusted for inflation, are actually equivalent to its funding for 1998.
The average filer can expect, at the very least, service problems and dropped calls should they need to contact the IRS for any reason during filing time. According to Nina Olson of the Taxpayer Advocate Service, the agency may leave some 57 percent of the more than 100 million phone calls that it regularly receives unanswered. That means that more than half of the people who call in to the IRS will receive a “courtesy disconnect,” otherwise known as “be hung up on by an agency that they help to fund.”
The average hold time of callers that are actually able to get through should be 30 minutes, nearly double 2013’s hold time of 18 minutes.
In addition to delaying planned technology upgrades for the agency and impacting other services, such as funding tax audits, this year’s budget cuts may also force the agency to furlough workers for two days later this year, cut support for the agency’s program that assists low-income taxpayers file their returns and delay tax refunds for filers who still use paper returns.
Ironically, the spending cuts meant to relieve the public debt burden may wind up costing the federal government in the long run. In his statement, Commisioner Koskinen estimated that the cutbacks could cost at least $2 billion in lost tax revenue.
For more information, check out the original AP article over at ABC News.