Internal Revenue Service

Thanks to years of enforced belt-tightening at the Internal Revenue Service, life is getting less stressful for folks who are seriously tired of helping foot the bill.

In today’s Federal Newscast, amid shrinking budgets and workforce cuts, the IRS has also seen a reduction in tax enforcement.

Now that the agency defends itself against more than a billion cyber attacks a year, Commissioner Chuck Rettig urged members of the Senate Finance Committee Wednesday for multi-year funds to modernize its hardware as well as its workforce, which hasn’t recovered from seven years of a hiring freeze. 

IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig has urged members of a House Appropriations subcommittee to give the agency the authority to hire short-term cyber and IT talent more quickly and pay them at a rate beyond the pay scale for career employees.

In today’s Federal Newscast, staffing cuts at the IRS have limited its ability to conduct audits, according to the Government Accountability Office.

The five-week partial government shutdown couldn’t have come at a worse time for the IRS, National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson had told Congress, but following a House Ways and Means oversight subcommittee hearing Thursday, she said she remains uncertain as to whether the shutdown’s impact would warrant pushing back this year’s filing season deadline.

The IRS is still reeling from the effects of the 35-day shutdown that ended last month, according to the agency’s taxpayer watchdog office.

The IRS processed “several million” tax returns on Monday in the opening hours of the tax filing season, but the effects of a 35-day partial government shutdown that ended Friday still leaves open questions about the agency’s readiness. 

The IRS will exempt more than half of its total workforce if the partial government shutdown extends into the upcoming filing season, according to updated guidance the agency released Tuesday. 

In today’s Federal Newscast, Senators Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Mark Warner (D-VA) say federal agencies aren’t proactively helping employees understand how or if they should pay taxes on moving expenses for their jobs.