IRS Seeks Seniors Who Haven’t Filed: You’re Picking Up the Tab

Surprise! Having a “free check” for folks by requiring them to file when they don’t normally have to file isn’t quite as simple as you’d think.

The IRS has announced that more than 25% of eligible seniors have not filed tax returns for 2007. This means that those seniors will not receive a rebate check

So yes, the IRS is going to spend more money sending out another mailing to advise seniors to file. Nice, huh?

Yes, I sound a little bitter. It’s not that I don’t want folks to get their checks. It’s because this economic stimulus package has been a disaster from start to finish - full of mixed messages, IRS mistakes and misinformation from the administration.

And now, we get the price tag. In addition to the $168 billion in “free money” being mailed to taxpayers (which will clearly be made up in later years), the costs of administering the economic stimulus package may reach close to a billion dollars.

IRS initially received $202 million to carry out the economic stimulus legislation - the cost, as mentioned before, of all of the ads in the Super Bowl.

The Social Security Administration received a supplemental of $31 million and Financial Management Service (which manages the Offset Program) received $64 million.

Add that to the reallocation of hundreds of IRS collections staff to answering taxpayer telephone calls - estimated by the IRS to be $565 million in foregone enforcement revenue. These costs are in addition to the significant reduction in IRS’s telephone service, which has been overwhelmed (by a factor of 6) by calls about rebate checks - the costs of the resulting reallocations have not yet been reported.

Add in more “publicity” for the programs as noted above - the initial (non-targeted) mailings cost $42 million. And the costs keeps rising.

I’ll tell you what’s being stimulated - clearly disguised government pork.