One week. That’s all it took. One week after Tax Day came and went, the Internal Revenue Service will send out furlough notices to its entire workforce. According to a press release from the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), those notices will identify five days when the IRS will be shut down entirely – with another two possibly in the works.
The shutdown is a result of cuts to the agency’s budget as a result of sequestration. NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley said, about the cuts, “[f]urloughing IRS employees is further evidence of the ongoing damage sequestration is causing across the country.”
As of today, those five identified furlough days are May 24, June 14, July 5, July 22, and August 30. On those days, IRS will shut down completely and taxpayers and practitioners will not have access to IRS resources. That means unanswered calls and closed offices.
That timing is in line with projections made in February by Kelley who had advised that “[t]he IRS is projecting between five and seven furlough days beginning sometime this summer.” Of course, the first two announced dates aren’t technically in summer – but po-tay-toe, po-tah-toe.
Of course, while many are breathing a sigh of relief that the furlough wasn’t forced until Tax Day 2013 was already in the books, don’t forget that many tax obligations are ongoing. Some of those obligations are slated to happen during or close to the furlough dates, including:
- May 15: nonprofit tax returns are due
- June 17: estimated payments for individual taxpayers are due
- June 30: FBAR reports (offshore accounts disclosures) are due
- September 16: estimated payments for individual taxpayers are due
- September 16: corporate, partnership and estate/trust income tax returns on extension are due
Ugh, right?
Keep in mind that this is on top of cuts already slated to happen and those that have happened already. Kelley noted that because of those prior budget cuts, the IRS operated “this filing season with 5,000 fewer employees than just two years ago.” She went on to say that further cuts in service would be “incredibly unfair to them and to the public.” It’s not good news.
Meanwhile, Congress is still hashing out details of the budget with the President. Discussions between NTEU and IRS are “continuing.”
