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

theregister.com

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

#31

Post by selectodude »

tokyobreakfast wrote: post #18
watwut wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this have anything to do with AI push? It is fairly straightforward that billionaire class cooperating with Trump admin dont want to pay taxes. Republicans want IRS incapable so that tax fraud flourish. Bonus point is that they will be able to pretend worry about it with minorities.

> Republicans want IRS incapable so that tax fraud flourish. That's wildly hyperbolic.

They literally put a tax cheat as head of the IRS last year.

People considering speaking frankly about reality as hyperbolic is how we got here.

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

#32

Post by arcologies1985 »

jdross wrote: post #11

8,500 IT workers in the IRS is insane. They barely have any products, and they contract externally for so much other work

They built IRS Direct File which was a huge improvement. Then the administration killed it to serve tax prep companies.

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

#33

Post by _DeadFred_ »

mschuster91 wrote: post #5

Starve the beast in action. The less employees the IRS has, the lower the chance there are enough staff on hand to audit the truly uber rich properly.

This follows the same logic as the claim that Biden bulldozed the border wall to make immigration law unenforceable. If you deliberately weaken enforcement capacity (and also burden/cripple government with unsustainable debt), you can then point to dysfunction as proof the system doesn’t work.

The only difference is that in this case, the stated goal of ‘starve the beast’ is intentionally sabotage the entire government as policy goal. Underfund agencies, expand deficits through tax cuts, then cite the resulting debt and institutional breakdown as justification to dismantle more of government.

It almost makes the people who were outraged at the idea of sabotaging border enforcement seem disingenuous that they don't now care that undermining federal capacity is public strategy.

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

#34

Post by justinator »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #20
justinator wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have 150 million paying "customers" (not including businesses) and bring in $5 trillion+ yearly.

Consider that many millions of those "customers" need to hire a professional for hundreds/thousands of dollars to properly interact with the IRS.

That's not the IT department's problem. Well, they'll get blamed, but that's pretty on-brand for IT departments.

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

#35

Post by AdamH12113 »

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]

> 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 the taxes you mentioned are levied by local governments to fund themselves. The United States has a federal system; it would be a much bigger change to centralize all of the funding.

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

#36

Post by dmix »

The headline say 40% based off something a single person said at a conference while the same article says the federal inspector general is saying a 16% reducation, as well as this quote:

> According to a report by the US Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, the IT department had 8,504 workers as of October 2024. As of October 2025, it had 7,135.

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

#37

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

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]

Why would you simplify the tax code if the whole point of the tax code is to create loopholes so you can pay way less taxes than the public would vote for?

The tax code exists for Welfare Queen Billionaires like Elon Musk.

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

#38

Post by bpodgursky »

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #3

The thing that makes me nervous is the statement that they plan to use AI. AI? The thing that is mathematically incapable of perfection, on finance information, for which perfection is table stakes? Not to mention all the privacy issues (although that boat has sailed).

If you think the state of the average tax return is "perfection as table stakes"..... you might be disappointed.

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

#39

Post by sleepybrett »

throw0101a wrote: post #22

Consist strategy in hampering income: > "Starve the beast" is a political strategy employed by American conservatives to limit government spending[1][2][3] by cutting taxes, to deprive the federal government of revenue in a deliberate effort to force it to reduce spending. The term "the beast", in this context, refers to the United States federal government and the programs it funds, primarily with American tax money…

I hope when someone else owns the whole government the beast becomes the us military.

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

#40

Post by OkayPhysicist »

mothballed wrote: post #17
mschuster91 wrote: post #5

Starve the beast in action. The less employees the IRS has, the lower the chance there are enough staff on hand to audit the truly uber rich properly.

The low income (under 25k) with EITC, were the largest audited group with 298,485 of 626,204 audits performed in 2022. The rest of those earning under 200k had 250,391 audits.[] 48% of audits were under 25k income. 87% of audits were people under 200k income. Kind of interferes with the idea these audits were all about going after the uber rich. They were way more about going after the poor than they were about going…

I mean, $200k puts you well above the 90th percentile of earners in the US, so the IRS is (if only slightly) focusing extra resources on the wealthy. Audits go after people who have relatively obviously incorrect information on their taxes. For people under $25,000, there's a good chance they forgot a W2 or something, which means it's a quick identification and fix for the IRS.
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