More IRS Budget Cuts

[Burnaby49]

Not directly on topic but of interest given my career as an ex CRA auditor. One not really applicable in Canada is the dangerous part. In my experience just a job.

http://www.cracked.com/article_21175_wh ... agent.html

I only had one taxpayer that was a concern about violence. He owned a fish processing plant and the issue was the value of the business at a specific date. He kept trying to get the appeals section to agree to his value by screaming and threatening to the point that the RCMP attended all the meetings. When an agreement was finally concluded he broke it the next day by coming in unannounced screaming and ranting demanding a better deal. Appeals gave up and told him to take it to court. I had to testify against him. I was told not to worry, there would be plenty of RCMP at the hearing. Great.

He had a history of violence, two ex wives and separated from his third, he used to beat them all up. A few days before the court hearing the problem solved itself. He was in my morning paper shot dead by police. He'd gone to his separated wife's house, beat her up and, when she fled, trashed the house. Ripped out fixtures, threw furniture through the windows, that kind of thing. When the police arrived he came out ranting and waving a gun at them so they shot him. Worked for me and apparently everybody else because there were no complaints whatever about the shooting. The estate quickly dropped the appeal and settled.

[operabuff]

Looks like more cuts may be on the way:

http://www.usnews.com/news/business/art ... ice-at-irs

[Judge Roy Bean]

And yet more reasons to ... oops, sorry, no politics.

[LaVidaRoja]

My friends who are still working report that the message from Washington appears to be "Beatings will continue until morale improves."

[operabuff]

Looks like the use of private debt collectors may return. Apparently it's in the Senate version of the highway bill. Here's an NYT editorial on the subject. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/14/opini ... -work.html

Based on the editorial, it has some bipartisan support so maybe it will pass. Which would be unfortunate - it hasn't worked as a revenue raiser in the past.

[AndyK]

I disagree with Operabuff. In the past, is SIGNIFICANTLY raised revenue -- for the private debt collectors.

[fortinbras]

Since the IRS is the principal source of revenue for the govt, the deliberate shortage of IRS staff means that clever and well-lawyered tax dodgers will escape, while the penny-ante tax cheats and people who simply made mistakes will be squeezed for the maximum.

It also means that incentive will shift to the people collecting student loans, veterans home loans, and other debts to the federal govt, to squeeze the debtors to the maximums, compromise as little as possible, and so forth.

[operabuff]

I disagree with Operabuff. In the past, is SIGNIFICANTLY raised revenue -- for the private debt collectors.

Fair point - probably why the proposal keeps on coming back.

[Number Six]

I agree with these concerns of private tax collection. Have any privatizations of major government functions ever been successful?

[Famspear]

Since the IRS is the principal source of revenue for the govt, the deliberate shortage of IRS staff means that clever and well-lawyered tax dodgers will escape....

I have been seeing the deterioration at the IRS for some time now. For example, lately it is almost impossible to get through to the Tax Practitioner Hotline. Hopefully it will get a little better after the September 15 tax deadline. I suspect that the personnel shortage may be partly to blame, but I don't know for sure.

[Famspear]

Even though we are in the middle of tax season, I'm finding that it's still easier to get through to the IRS Practitioner Priority Service (the Hotline) than it was last fall.

Still, the problems of funding and training remain. I was on the phone for about 15 minutes earlier today, waiting to talk to someone at the IRS about requesting data on an individual taxpayer in bankruptcy. The IRS employee I talked with said she had been working for the IRS practitioner hotline for nine years, and yet she had never heard of the section 6103 disclosure rules applicable to my particular case (which involve a required disclosure of confidential information by the IRS to a third party -- even without the taxpayer's permission). She was also unfamiliar with the relevant Internal Revenue Manual provisions.

Granted, these kinds of problems happen only about 10 or 20 percent of the time when I call the IRS. I guess it's a small miracle that I don't have more problems obtaining disclosures.

The wait "on hold" right now (Friday, March 25) appears to be about 15 minutes.