I’ve written how the partisan attacks on the IRS have devastated the service.  Now, when a taxpayer calls the IRS, s/he can expect to be on hold for 75 minutes- and hope that when someone finally comes on the phone, they are not (un)intentionally disconnected- or told that the representative can’t help the caller.

The special Priority Practitioner Line- the one that is only available to tax professionals who are have specific taxpayer issues- is actually no better.  OK, we only have to wait for 45 minutes- but that is professional time for which our clients must pay.

But, it’s more than that.  We had a client be informed that their request for an automatic extension was denied because they faxed in the request a day late. Except, we were the ones who requested if for their company- and it was sent on the 16^th of March.  (You should know that personal tax returns are due on the 15^th of April, but corporate tax returns are due on the 15^th of March.)  And, guess what?  The 15^th of March was on a Sunday; that means the taxes, by law are due on the 16^th.  (Taxes are never due on weekends; the date they are due is the very next Monday- unless it is a state holiday- like Emancipation Day in DC or Patriot’s Day in Massachusetts), when it becomes due on the Tuesday for those jurisdictions only.)

So, the IRS representative who wrote our client that their extensions was denied because it was late was wrong. Dead wrong- but they probably are so new, so uneducated, or so overworked, they lacked the true knowledge of their errors.   But, it still terrorizes the taxpayer.

It is truly amazing to me that any political party considers it acceptable to starve the IRS.  There is NO other agency of the government that collects $ 10 for every $ 1 it is provided.  Oh, sure, this party is ticked off that the IRS has been charged with enforcing PPACA, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) and hopes it fails to do so with so little funding.

But, consider this.  The IRS budget is currently $ 10.9 billion.  In 2010, it was $12.1 billion.  Sounds like not much of a change, right?  Except that there is a decreasing value of the dollar.  Oh, and there are no 16 million more taxpayers than there were in 2010.   Oh, and the number of “information returns”- the 1099’s (which are required for scrutiny and completeness) and W-2’s- have doubled from 2010- from 1 billion to more than 2.1 billion.

All this means, without the need to comply with Obamacare, the IRS has really been subjected to the equivalent of a $ 7 billion cut, in terms of the funds necessary to accomplish its tasks.

Which probably explain why, on the 15th of April, the IRS simply ceased acknowledging the receipt of electronic tax returns.  So, one had no idea if the data was accepted or not.  So, if you were like us, that meant we submitted automatic extension requests for every single taxpayer that had not received an acknowledgement.  To insure they would not be guilty of ‘failure to file’ regulations.  Of course, this did mean that we burdened the IRS with potentially unnecessary forms.  But, our obligation is to our clients- and the agency, by failing to respond in a timely fashion, was going to have deal with the consequences of their (in)actions.

So, the next time you vote, consider the true consequence of your actions.

Unless, of course, you don’t want help with your taxes.  Unless, of course, you don’t care when you get an audit request that is frivolous and the service won’t care what you say, since they have no time to verify the facts.

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