You remember when you were little and you would keep checking the sky for snow clouds on the off chance that you got a snow day? Welcome to the grown-up version: checking the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) web site for sequestration news.
But, like your mom, I’m going to give you the bad news, and I’ll try to break it to you gently: You’re not getting a snow day.
With all of the noise about cuts at IRS, taxpayers assumed that might result in an extension of tax season. That’s not true: the IRS has announced that any furloughs for employees as a result of the sequestration will not happen until after tax season ends. That means tax season will go on as normal (or as normal as you can call it this year). There will be no delay in deadlines. No extra days for taxpayers. Tax Day will be April 15, sequester or no sequester.
But don’t be fooled. If the sequester happens, cuts will likely impact IRS. The plan is to push those off as much as possible. National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) President Colleen M. Kelley has advised that “[t]he IRS is projecting between five and seven furlough days beginning sometime this summer.”
It will likely make a bad situation worse. The IRS has already complained to Congress about cuts – just as their responsibilities are increasing under the new Health Care Act. Kelley noted that due to prior budget cuts, “the IRS is operating this filing season with 5,000 fewer employees than just two years ago.” She explained that further cuts in service would be “incredibly unfair to them and to the public.” And she’s right. Remember that, for 2012, the IRS answered about 68% of calls to the agency and the average hold time grew to nearly 17 minutes. As for written correspondence? That same year, the IRS only responded to 48% of written correspondences within established time frames.
