The Internal Revenue Service is the government agency that taxpayers “love to hate,” but starving it to death is bad for the country. The Biden administration’s Build Back Better legislation, which includes critically needed funding for the IRS, in now in limbo. The president has promised to fashion a stripped-down bill that can pass Congress. It is imperative that this funding be approved. Otherwise the IRS’s ability to do its job could grind to a halt.
Since 2010 alone, funding for the IRS has decreased by 20%, while tax returns filed have increased over 13%. Meanwhile, the tax code gets more complex by the year, experienced IRS personnel are retiring and not being replaced, and COVID-related burdens - sending out millions of stimulus payments and monthly child care allowances, for example - have pushed the IRS to its breaking point.
There are several reasons why an underfunded, understaffed IRS is hurting the country. First, today’s IRS, already dealing with a backlog of millions of unprocessed returns and taxpayer correspondance, received 280 million calls in 2021, of which only 11% were answered. Taxpayers need and are entitled to better customer service than that, especially when it comes to correctly filing one’s tax returns.
