(Newswire.net — December 20, 2014) — During a press conference – before the beginning of tax-filing season, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen told media that about half of people who call the IRS for assistance with their taxes will not be able to reach an employee. Fewer agents will mean slower auditing, leading to later refunds than in past years, Koskinen explained.
“Everybody’s return will get processed,” Koskinen said, according to AP. “But people have gotten very used to being able to file their return and quickly getting a refund. This year we may not have the resources, the people, to provide refunds as quickly as we have in the past.”
The IRS says, that in recent years it has been able to offer tax refunds within three weeks after electronic filing. However, budget cuts will prolong that period, Kosinen said. Amid the budget cuts, the IRS has instituted a hiring freeze and eliminated most overtime, which resulted in decrease in personnel.
According to AP, the IRS budget was cut by $346 million for the fiscal year that ends in September 2015 – which is $1.2 billion less than the agency was allotted in 2010.
“Because to the extent we have fewer people to audit and enforce the tax code, that means some people cutting corners on their taxes or not complying are going to get away with it, and that is a decision that Congress has made,” Kosinen said.
“In some ways, these budget cuts are really a tax cut for tax cheats,” Koskinen said.
Conservatives in Congress have worked to cut IRS funding in order to weaken implementation of the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare.
On the other side, “starving the IRS hurts more than just the agency’s workforce, it hurts all taxpayers,” said Colleen M. Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents IRS employees. He warned amid funding cuts would mean, “Correspondence will continue to pile up and taxpayers will wait longer and longer for a response.”
The 2015 tax filing season “will be one of the most complicated filing seasons we’ve ever had,” Koskinen cautioned last month at the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants National Tax Conference in Washington, DC.
“All we can do is try to maximize our services as well as we can,” Koskinen said, however, “as well as we can is still going to be miserable,“ he said.