A new report to Congress finds the Internal Revenue Service is facing an unmanageable workload in the face of budget cuts, according to the
Associated Press. And, IRS' National Taxpayer Advocate says it's not just hindering the agency's mission. It's harming taxpayer rights. Congress cut the IRS budget by more than $1.5 billion, compared with what the administration requested for this year. At the same time, the agency has to deal with an ever-more-complex tax code, with 4,400 changes between 2001 and 2010. The report finds that's forced the IRS to rely on shortcuts, mostly using automated procedures. For example, IRS computers flagged almost a million tax returns as fraudulent last year and declined to process them without ever giving the taxpayers involved an opportunity to respond.
I can attest to this. I had to call them just this week to deal with a tax payment allocation issue.
ReplyDeleteI was on hold for over 20 minutes before anyone would pick up the call.
After all the waiting, giving them information, etc, they informed me they could not fix the problem until next week (ARRGH!!) and I will have to call `em back then.
And do it all over again.
Fair tax. And then we could give them all the free time they need. Along with walking papers and a huge cut in the annual budget.
ReplyDelete