Congress Considers 7.7% Cut to IRS Budget

The fiscal year 2016 Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill, which provides funding for the Treasury Department, the Judiciary, the Small Business Administration, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and several other agencies, will be considered in subcommittee tomorrow.

The committee press release states that the bill “cuts funding to poor-performing agencies—including an $838 million reduction to the Internal Revenue Service.” This comes after a $350 million dollar cut to IRS funding that was passed earlier this year.

“The only possible logic to support the expectation that drastically cutting the funding to a government agency will improve its performance is ‘the beatings will be administered until morale improves’,” said Robert Kerr, Sr. Director, Government Relations at the National Association of Enrolled Agents (NAEA).  “If this is strictly a punitive measure, the ones who will be made to suffer most are taxpayers and tax preparers, who are unable to get through to the IRS due to staff cuts and facility eliminations. We learned that in the most recent tax season.”