IRS budget cuts

The Internal Revenue Service may be the least-loved arm of the federal government. For tax-hating Republican lawmakers still angry over what they see as IRS malfeasance, the antipathy is especially strong. That explains why GOP lawmakers repeatedly have cut the agency’s budget over the past several years, including a 3percent reduction this year. But no matter how therapeutic it may feel to hack away at the IRS, it is deeply irrational.

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said Thursday that the budget punishment has been so harsh that he may have to shut down the agency sometime this summer.

Koskinen’s warning comes on the heels of an ominous report from National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson, who represents everyday Americans’ concerns at the IRS. “If these projections prove accurate, taxpayers in 2015 will receive the worst levels of service since the IRS imple- mented its current performance measures in 2001,” Olson reported.

If the IRS were overfunded, some cutting back would be justified. But the agency has seen its inflation-adjusted budget reduced by about 17percent since 2010, Olson calculated. The consequences won’t end with taxpayer frustration. Koskinen has estimated that eroding enforcement will result in the government losing $2billion from its $346million cut in IRS funding. IRS dysfunction will also make the implicit tax that Americans pay tax preparers every year even closer to mandatory.

This is, to use the technical term, nuts. Congress should restore IRS funding in the short term, then simplify the tax code in the long term so that it doesn’t take a CPA to navigate the internal revenue system.

It is often said that government should protect people who follow the rules and pay their taxes. Instead, Congress has opted to help tax cheats and the tax preparation industry.