IRS lost 40% of IT staff, 80% of tech leaders in 'efficiency' shakeup • Hacker News Board

Re: IRS lost 40% of IT staff, 80% of tech leaders in 'efficiency' shakeup

#121

Post by conductr » Thu, Feb 19, 2026, 10:23 PM UTC

dheera wrote: post #85

AdamH12113 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Get rid of sales tax, property tax, exemptions, IRAs, 401ks, short capital gains, long capital gains, medicare, state, all of that bullcrap. Annualized, non-annualized, credits for having an EV on the 4th day of the second Tuesday while being a fisherman, married and single filing differences, end all of that. I agree with your overall point of simplifying taxes by merging more things into income tax, but some of t…

> The United States has a federal system That doesn't prevent there being a single point of collection and distribution.

It seems efficient and simple that way. But you don't want federal politics playing that much of a part of your local life. And you don't want your local politicians to have to pander to the federal levels just to get what they need or what is theirs. I think this would result in disaster as the federal politicians are too out of touch with local needs.

If we had a single formula for taxes, then each taxing body could have their own rate table to apply to it, but still collect it directly - then I think that would be a better approach.

For simplicity sake, take income tax at flat rates. Federal may be 20%, your state might be 10%, city might be 5%. Maybe my state rate is only 5% and you might want to move here, but nationally we all pay the Federal 20% rate.

Re: IRS lost 40% of IT staff, 80% of tech leaders in 'efficiency' shakeup

#122

Post by stephen_cagle » Thu, Feb 19, 2026, 10:26 PM UTC

conductr wrote: post #118

stephen_cagle wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that 415:1 the rate of return of an audit, or the expense:revenue ratio of the IRS as a whole? I remember hearing some time ago that the expense ratio was 11% for the IRS? But 415:1 is way way less than 11%.

Captured revenue : cost to capture (could be an audit, billing for interest/fees due, etc. lots of avenues to capture revenue that is being missed). The problem is these metrics aren't really scalable productivity metrics. If you doubled cost, it might go to 100:1, if you tripled cost, it might go to 0.5:1 Each dollar generally gets more expensive to capture.

Good point, and kind of interesting in that as we keep cutting funding to the IRS, this ratio will probably get wider (which looks good, but is actually bad for what it implies).

Re: IRS lost 40% of IT staff, 80% of tech leaders in 'efficiency' shakeup

#123

Post by munk-a » Thu, Feb 19, 2026, 10:34 PM UTC

lazyasciiart wrote: post #30

dheera wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Didn’t they just get rid of the IRS automated filing app? You’ll have to kill off TurboTax and siblings to simplify the tax code.

Yes, it was completed and operational and the new administration pulled it from public use.

Re: IRS lost 40% of IT staff, 80% of tech leaders in 'efficiency' shakeup

#124

Post by munk-a » Thu, Feb 19, 2026, 10:39 PM UTC

dheera wrote: post #23

munk-a wrote: post #9

Defunding the IRS is nothing but an effort to reduce tax enforcement. People that have relatively straightforward finances can be trivially audited in a formulaic way with data that's on hand - a lack of human auditing resources tends to benefit those with more complex finances which also tend to be the people with a lot of money who can afford to lobby for less enforcement funding. Also for reference, in 2024 the IR…

[flagged]

I wholly support drastically simplifying the tax code - I disagree with the extent to which you'd simplify it since there is a very good reason to have property taxes and some of the sin taxes have notable social benefits. Additionally, using tax rebates as an incentive to install home solar is an excellent initiative for the environment. Our tax code should be pretty simple - it shouldn't be a single line (or even multiple graduated lines).

Until we simplify the tax code, though, can we properly fund the IRS to actually audit it? I think my thing (funding the IRS) is a lot easier to do quickly than your thing (completely rewriting how the government garners revenue) and I don't want perfection to be the enemy of the good.

Re: IRS lost 40% of IT staff, 80% of tech leaders in 'efficiency' shakeup

#125

Post by munk-a » Thu, Feb 19, 2026, 10:41 PM UTC

rtkwe wrote: post #80

dheera wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Ok what about for the people that mainly earn their living not from an income paid by a job; ie the richest people in the country?

That's an excellent criticism of the parent and why we really do want a somewhat complex tax code even if it should be far simpler than what we have today.

We also want to balance regressive and progressive taxes, we do want to influence some behaviors through taxes that provide positive social outcomes - there are several really good complexities to have in our tax code. Just not as many as we do today.

Re: IRS lost 40% of IT staff, 80% of tech leaders in 'efficiency' shakeup

#126

Post by munk-a » Thu, Feb 19, 2026, 10:43 PM UTC

claytongulick wrote: post #103

anigbrowl wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's fair. The US has so many administrative layers with taxing powers - federal, state, county, and municipal, and in many cases administrative bodies also charge massive filing fees, and courts charge large fees to finance themselves because they're consistently under-funded by legislatures. So Americans get taxed a lot at many different levels of activity. The cognitive load of having so many diffe…

> maybe we should change that and have a simpler system with much less complexity Wholeheartedly agree, but I see the root cause of the issue being income tax itself. As soon as you tax income, you'll go down and endless rabbit hole of what's fair to tax, how much, what kind of income, investment income vs wage income, percentage vs flat rate, etc... That gave us the mess we have. I like the idea of consumption tax e…

Consumption taxes are almost always regressive and improperly place the majority of the tax burden on the poor - they're good to have (especially the sin taxes and tax discounts on specific encouraged behaviors) but they should be coupled with taxes on wealth (aka property) and income. And these taxes should be somewhat complex - just not to the extent we have today.

Re: IRS lost 40% of IT staff, 80% of tech leaders in 'efficiency' shakeup

#127

Post by munk-a » Thu, Feb 19, 2026, 10:47 PM UTC

jandrewrogers wrote: post #112

munk-a wrote: post #9

Defunding the IRS is nothing but an effort to reduce tax enforcement. People that have relatively straightforward finances can be trivially audited in a formulaic way with data that's on hand - a lack of human auditing resources tends to benefit those with more complex finances which also tend to be the people with a lot of money who can afford to lobby for less enforcement funding. Also for reference, in 2024 the IR…

That “415:1” is misleading and manipulative. The target rate of recovery is ~10:1, which is roughly what the IRS actually achieves. Audits are not an infinite money glitch. I used to work for a Federal audit agency that also recovered ~10:1. The reason we target 10:1 recovery on audits is because the return on funding additional audits beyond that falls off very sharply. Furthermore, more aggressive auditing greatly…

I'll admit - the 415:1 was pulled from an article detailing information from 2024 but the main point isn't the actual value but the fact that it's more than 1:1. When the IRS receives more funding the US government gets more money than what it is budgeting - this doesn't scale to infinity, at some point you'll have nearly complete auditing capture and more budget will just be burning money but we're no where near that point.

Putting money into the IRS is basically a free money printer for the US government and it's only deep corruption that keeps it so poorly funded.

Re: IRS lost 40% of IT staff, 80% of tech leaders in 'efficiency' shakeup

#128

Post by tstrimple » Thu, Feb 19, 2026, 10:50 PM UTC

jmyeet wrote: post #117

Remember when the Biden administration massively increased IRS funding and the Right collectively lost their minds? They fairly successfully pushed the idea that these agents were going to go after average citizens. They never were and you're way too gullible if you ever believed that. Every $1 spent on the IRS returns roughly $12 in revenue [1]. This revenue doesn't come from W2 employees. It comes from exposing tax…

> Right collectively lost their minds

When are they not collectively losing their minds over something? It's like their one consistent characteristic. Jumping from one made up moral panic to the next. Somehow the "average" person cannot see the clear line of what conservatives have supported since the foundation of this country. They lost their minds over the idea that black people could be free citizens of the country. They lost their minds when women got the right to vote. They lost their minds when their objectively racist Jim Crow laws were struck down. They lost their minds when gay people were allowed to get married. They are losing their minds over immigrants and trans folk now. There is always some "other" holding them back and making everything worse. This from the party of "personal responsibility".

Re: IRS lost 40% of IT staff, 80% of tech leaders in 'efficiency' shakeup

#129

Post by groundzeros2015 » Thu, Feb 19, 2026, 10:50 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #114

groundzeros2015 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The evidence was the baseline before the increase

The baseline was there was significant tax evasion by high net worth individuals. The staff up was to counter that, staffing down puts us back at reduced enforcement. Someone has to pay to operate a nation state, you can’t borrow forever to fill the gap and there’s nothing left to cut. Roughly the bottom 60% of Americans do not make enough to have a federal income tax liability. So, we can kick the can on the top 40%…

> The staff up was to counter that

Stated reasons may or may not be actual.

If you recall these were not just accountants but agents who carry guns etc.

I see this as very similar to the ICE situation. Biden has loyalty and power in IRS and so gave it money to help him police. As the government gets more corrupted I think we’ll find more agencies weaponized like this.

Re: IRS lost 40% of IT staff, 80% of tech leaders in 'efficiency' shakeup

#130

Post by toomuchtodo » Thu, Feb 19, 2026, 10:52 PM UTC

groundzeros2015 wrote: post #129

toomuchtodo wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The baseline was there was significant tax evasion by high net worth individuals. The staff up was to counter that, staffing down puts us back at reduced enforcement. Someone has to pay to operate a nation state, you can’t borrow forever to fill the gap and there’s nothing left to cut. Roughly the bottom 60% of Americans do not make enough to have a federal income tax liability. So, we can kick the can on the top 40%…

> The staff up was to counter that Stated reasons may or may not be actual. If you recall these were not just accountants but agents who carry guns etc. I see this as very similar to the ICE situation. Biden has loyalty and power in IRS and so gave it money to help him police. As the government gets more corrupted I think we’ll find more agencies weaponized like this.

Can you provide proof of this “loyalty and power” at the IRS to Biden mentioned? Because without proof, it sounds like a “deep state” conspiracy theory without evidence.