Why IRS Might Be Moving More Slowly This Year

[BobKamman]

Office of Personnel Management (OPM) officials met with agency leaders across government Thursday and directed them to begin firing employees still in their probationary period a year or more after being hired.

Federal employees remain on probation anywhere from one to two years after being hired, depending on their agency, a status that still comes with workplace protections but makes them easier to remove.  The move could impact as many as 200,000 federal employees.

A source familiar with OPM said agency leaders have directed agencies to fire all probationary employees “with some exceptions.” It was not immediately clear what those exceptions were or the extent of discretion given to agencies.

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5144113-federal-probationary-employees-fired/ 

Meanwhile, Reuters reports:

Gavin Kliger, a top staffer in DOGE, arrived at a new agency, the IRS, on Thursday, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

It was the first time a Musk aide has entered the IRS, a longtime target of Republicans who claim without evidence that the Biden administration weaponized the agency to target small businesses and middle-class Americans with unnecessary audits.

[IRonMaN]

Just out of curiosity, how many middle class taxpayer audits did you have during the Biden era?   I had zero.  Unless somebody else here says they have had a ton of them, I would say he failed in weaponizing the agency.

[BobKamman]

There's my case involving the victim of identity theft -- someone used his name and SSN to file a $50,000 claim for fuel tax credit.  The lawyer assigned to the Tax Court case was hired six months ago.  I'm hoping IRS is allowed some "exceptions" so the money the Biden Administration spent on orientation and training is not down the drain. But other agencies reportedly are firing their recently-hired lawyers.  Not to mention those that are resigning when prosecutions are canceled.  

The SBA has fired 20% of its workforce.  If we get rid of enough small businesses, we won't need so many people processing those BOI reports.  

[sjrcpa]

The employees essential for tax season are supposed to work through May. Not sure if the ones on probation count for that. Or maybe it only applies to those who accepted the offer to resign.

I can't keep up.

[BobKamman]

IRS used to have "temporary" and "permanent part-time" job categories, mostly at the Service Centers.  I'm not sure whether the system still operates that way.  Most of them have full-time supervisors, and some of those have not been on the job for more than a year.  

 According to recent data, around 150,000 federal employees leave the government each year through retirement or quitting.  About 75,000 people took the "quit now, collect a paycheck through September" offer.  So, many of them were probably on their way out the door anyway, and appreciate the going-away gift.  Our tax dollars at work.  

[Tax Messiah]

As far as I can unscientifically discern, i.e. based on personal experience and anecdotal observations in my provincial neck of the woods, very, very few taxpayers have had their returns examined in the last five years.  There are exceptions, of course -->

Now if Biden did direct the Service to perform unnecessary exams, no one got the memo around these parts.  However, in this child's opinion, unnecessary audits had been performed with regularity since long before Grandpa Joe stole the election.  Humphreys County, one of the poorest counties in Mississippi, has the highest per capita audit rate.  It's ground zero for EITC audits because the IRS is convinced that a high rate of low income folks in the County are claiming more EITC than the rules say they are entitled to.  So what if they are?  How many millions of dollars are being stolen from the Treasury by these poverty-stricken folks??  For Pete's sake, the EITC is capped!

Now imagine if instead of sending a platoon of RAs into Humphreys County to claw back a few bucks, the same agents were instructed to mail out multipage IDRs to addresses of the wealthiest 1% (whose audit rate is piteously low).  I wonder which of the efforts would claw back the most dollars?  C'mon peeps, the DOGE teens had all this figured out before they arrived in D.C.

[Tax Messiah]

Unfortunately, it's very expensive to fire federal employees with civil service protections.  So you have to buy their jobs from them.  There's a pretty quick payback on the investment:  you pay them for half a year to sit on their haunches, but save having to pay them annual salaries for the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years in many cases.

[BobKamman]

From the Washington Post:

The Trump administration is expected to begin laying off thousands of employees at the Internal Revenue Service, six people briefed on the matter said, as billionaire Elon Musk’s team begins to target tax collections.

Treasury officials have discussed laying off roughly 9,000 employees still in their probationary period as part of broader dismissals across the government of recently hired workers, according to the six people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal internal conversations. That number could not be immediately confirmed, and spokespeople both for the IRS and Treasury declined to comment. The cuts could start as soon as Friday.

The layoffs are likely targeting tax collection, several of the people briefed on the matter said. Indeed, associates of Musk’s team are beginning to meet with high-ranking IRS officials about what could prove dramatic changes to the tax agency. Gavin Kliger, a software engineer now working at the IRS, met with Ken Corbin, the IRS’s chief of taxpayer services, and Heather Maloy, the agency’s top enforcement official, during his first day at the agency’s headquarters Thursday, according to several of the people familiar with the meetings.

...The IRS has said publicly that personnel critical to the tax filing season are ineligible for the “deferred resignation” plan that encouraged federal personnel to quit. That has fueled speculation that the cuts to IRS personnel will be concentrated among the agency’s tax collection staff, which could reduce the amount of revenue brought into federal coffers even as Musk calls for a reduced deficit.

[BobKamman]

Experiments with government are admirable.  Chairman Mao did it with his Cultural Revolution. They failed, but at least a billion people learned what didn't work.  Now Americans are already learning.  Today the Department of Energy; tomorrow the Treasury?  Bloomberg reports:

The Energy Department is seeking to bring back nuclear energy specialists after abruptly telling hundreds of workers that their jobs were eliminated, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The employees, responsible for designing and maintaining the nation’s cache of nuclear weapons at the National Nuclear Safety Administration, were part of a larger wave of workers dismissed from the Energy Department, drawing alarm from national security experts. Between 300 and 400 NNSA workers were terminated, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The agency’s quick reversal was announced Friday in an all-staff meeting. The NNSA is seeking to recall the workers because they deal with sensitive national security secrets, according to the people, who weren’t authorized to talk about the matter, which is not public.

Those cuts are especially concerning because the positions typically require high-level security clearances and training that can take 18 months or longer, said Jill Hruby, who served as the NNSA administrator during the Biden administration. 

“These people are likely never going to come back and work for the government,” Hruby said in a phone interview. “We’ve had a very active program requiring an increase to our staff so the indiscriminate layoffs of people will be really difficult for the coming years.”

[sjrcpa]

Wow!

SMH

Will it end?

[IRonMaN]

It actually is getting entertaining to watch.  So many of these folks, including about half of the elected officials, think that the whole government needs to have a wrecking ball taken to it and are thinking DOGE is a great thing ---------------- until all of a sudden ----------------- hey, wait a second that affects me or my electorate so you really can't do that.  They always thought someone else was getting something for free and felt cheated.  It sucks for them when they actually find out that it just wasn't "welfare folks" that were benefitting from some of that spending.  

Personally, I'm just getting ready to go out in the woods and dig a bomb shelter.  I'll be like a groundhog and just come out in a few years when hopefully the coast is clear. 

[abctax55]

JEFF...any extra space in there if I bring my own supplies? I'd have to bring Juno too. Not sure about John 😉

[IRonMaN]

I’ll just build it a little bigger than my original plans 😁

[BobKamman]

The Washington Post reports this morning:

Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service is seeking access to a heavily guarded Internal Revenue Service system that includes detailed financial information about every taxpayer, business and nonprofit in the country, according to three people familiar with the activities, sparking alarm within the tax agency.

Under pressure from the White House, the IRS is considering a memorandum of understanding that would give officials from DOGE — which stands for Department of Government Efficiency — broad access to tax-agency systems, property and datasets. Among them is the Integrated Data Retrieval System, or IDRS, which enables tax agency employees to access IRS accounts — including personal identification numbers — and bank information. It also lets them enter and adjust transaction data and automatically generate notices, collection documents and other records.

According to a draft of the memorandum obtained by The Washington Post, DOGE software engineer Gavin Kliger is set to work at the IRS for 120 days, though the tax agency and the White House can renew his deployment for the same duration. His primary goal at the IRS is to provide engineering assistance and IT modernization consulting.

The agreement requires that Kliger maintain confidentiality of tax return information, shield it from unauthorized access and destroy any such information shared with him upon the completion of his IRS deployment.

IDRS access is extremely limited — taxpayers who have had their information wrongfully disclosed or even inspected are entitled by law to monetary damages — and the request for DOGE access has raised deep concern within the IRS, according to three people familiar with internal agency deliberations who, like others in this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

Kliger had not been granted IDRS access as of Sunday evening, according to a person with firsthand knowledge of his movement and access at the tax agency, as acting IRS commissioner Doug O’Donnell had yet to finalize the memorandum that would permit him to do more detailed work.

[IRonMaN]

I guess I must have missed the easy one for tax dollar savings that I'm sure they already brought up.  Aren't government employees now required to stay at Super 8 hotels instead of Trump facilities?

[BobKamman]

From the NY Times online:

The Internal Revenue Service will begin laying off roughly 6,000 employees on Thursday as part of the Trump administration’s push to downsize the federal work force, three people familiar with the agency’s plans said.

The terminations will target relatively recent hires at the I.R.S., which the Biden administration had attempted to revitalize with a surge of funding and new staff, the people said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. . . .

I.R.S. managers on Wednesday began asking employees to report to the office in the coming days and bring with them their government-issued equipment, according to messages viewed by The New York Times. The I.R.S. employs roughly 100,000 accountants, lawyers and other staff across the country.

“Under an executive order, I.R.S. has been directed to terminate probationary employees who were not deemed critical to filing season,” one such email reads. “We don’t have many details that we are permitted to share, but this is all tied to compliance with the executive order.”

The layoffs come in the middle of tax filing season. Former I.R.S. officials and Democrats have warned that losing such a large number of employees could still disrupt the ability of millions of Americans’ to easily file their taxes this year, even if the layoffs are not supposed to affect those deemed “critical.” Representatives for the I.R.S. and the Treasury Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

[IRonMaN]

Hopefully they saved enough IRS employees to collect all of those tariffs. 

[IRonMaN]

As a side note, I know Jim liked to post updates on Intuit stock prices.  Can we exchange those posts for updates on egg prices?

[BobKamman]

@IRonMaN Pentagon has been told to prepare for 8% cuts every year for the next five years.  Well, that should keep them from starting another war with Japan, like Roosevelt did.