Suppose you have to call the Internal Revenue Service in the next couple of months. Maybe with a simple what-do-I-do-next question, maybe to check on a refund. Or plead for a payment plan. Or just talk to a (one hopes) knowledgeable, intelligent insider who will help you make sense of our insane (thanks to Congress) tax code. What happens next …

Maybe not much.

Once you’ve reached what you hope is the appropriate IRS office, you may get, not a human being but a recording. That, we are used too. But the IRS version won’t be like that. It will not be one of the Push-One- For-English, Push-Two-For-Bulgarian, etc. Which says you may be on hold for some time. Or until you get tired of holding and collapse. And there you sit, gripping the phone, weeping in rage and anger while repeatedly fracturing one or more of the Ten Commandments.

Some members of the public are well aware that the IRS is collecting (or trying) a lot more with fewer people and stretched resources. It has 13,000 fewer workers than it had five years ago. Although it has an aging, retirement-eligible workforce, it is barely replacing people who leave.

IRS Commissioner John A. Koskinen says that when inflation is factored in, the IRS budget is comparable to the 1998 budget, except with 27 million more tax returns, including yours, to process. And there is the Affordable Care Act, which requires the IRS to collect taxes (penalties) from some uninsured people.

Congress has been squeezing the IRS for years. Then ordering it to hire outsiders (who get a 20-percent plus cut) to collect taxes the IRS can’t because, well, its budget is being squeezed. The contract collectors run wild, for a while, then Congress tells them to stop. For a while.

Some people — many of them in Congress — think the IRS needs to be spanked for targeting conservative groups asking for tax breaks. And for losing some possibly vital e-mails. Messages that might have shown it wasn’t, as billed, a rogue operation conceived and confined to the Cincinnati operation.

But while some people have strong opinions on the IRS, most people just want to pay their taxes and move on. Last week, we talked with Colleen Kelley. She’s president of the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents many of the IRS’ frontline troops. She echoed what Koskinen said about IRS belt-tightening. To listen to that interview, click here

Meanwhile, we’ve heard from lots of IRS employees who live with the agency’s mission — and problems — day after day, year after year. For instance:

• “While I do believe the IRS does a pretty good job, given everything expected, and the resources available, I also have some criticisms about things it does poorly. These are things reflected every year in the employee survey — communication from leadership and trust in senior leaders being the main concerns. I could write a week’s worth of columns about this, but it will have to wait until I’m ready to leave federal employment.” — J
• “Of course, the IRS can’t really be abolished, if the country is to continue on — it’s true, a society has to be able to fund its activities. There may be a complete makeover, but there has to be some income and some way to collect it, or we cease to be a communal society, we will degenerate into individual states/entities with no nationally directed activities. If this is where we’re headed — well, I don’t like to think about that. Even the ideologically driven Congress that wants to “prove” government is broken, by defunding it to the point where it can’t possibly function, surely wants to maintain some national function — for military contractors, if nothing else. …

  “There are positives to working for the IRS, but it does get discouraging and frustrating, when you’re constantly demonized by politicians, and when even within your own organization, like Rodney Dangerfield, you get no respect. And very little communication. And yet are constantly expected to be cheerful, enthusiastic, self-sacrificing in completion of your duties, which grow each week, and which are changed every couple of months, as executives continually rotate in and out on short-term acting assignments. There is no permanent hiring in these positions anymore, there are frequent “reorganizations” and so leadership changes frequently and the higher ups are constantly learning new duties while at the same time, trying to put their own mark on their new position, to show their fantastic leadership “skills,” so that they can get the next promotion (temporary, naturally, since there are no permanent positions these days), and move out, so that the next up-and-comer can move in for a short time, to put his/her own stamp on the department, while learning the actual work done there, and so on, and all the time these leadership doors are revolving, the employees there on a permanent basis *still* have to carry out the responsibilities of that office, while training a new leader in the duties of that office, and adapting to that new leader’s individual mandates about how things ought to be done. It’s a huge burden on the people who actually do the work … and the employees are just expected to smile and do all the extra work.” — Midwest IRS

NEARLY USELESS FACTOID:

Compiled by Michael O’Connell

The Pittsburgh Steelers franchise is the only NFL team whose logo appears on just one side of its helmets.

Source: Steelers.com

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