IRS chief paints bleak picture of strapped agency’s staffing

WASHINGTON — IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said budget woes have made it difficult to find young talent.

Speaking recently at the National Press Club, Koskinen delivered a pessimistic message about an agency that is a major Memphis employer with about 2,700 workers at the IRS Center, a complex of 11 buildings at 5333 Getwell.

Koskinen noted Congress has denied the agency sufficient funding, forcing it to deliver taxpayers “truly an abysmal level of service.” He ventured beyond budget woes, saying the Internal Revenue Service is in danger of having its personnel infrastructure seriously eroded.

The IRS shed 13,000 workers between 2010 and 2014. The decrease is magnified because young people are not replacing them, he said.

“As highly skilled employees retire, we need to replace them with the next generation of talented, dedicated people,” Koskinen said. “But that is becoming harder and harder to do, in large part as the result of the hiring freeze we have been forced to maintain for the last several years to absorb the significant cuts to our budget since 2010.”

Many in Congress aren’t inclined to provide more funding. U.S. Rep. Ander Crenshaw, R-Florida., chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee on financial services and general government, told the Federal Diary “more money is not the only solution ... The IRS has the flexibility to ensure that its limited resources are used as cost-effectively as possible.”

More than half of the IRS workforce is over 50, and 40 percent will be eligible to retire by 2019. “Meanwhile, the number of IRS employees under 30 has been steadily declining, and is now less than 3 percent of our workforce,” Koskinen said. He said Congress is punishing the IRS for “the problems of the past ... overspending on conferences, making some ill-advised videos and, of course, inappropriate scrutiny of applications from groups seeking social welfare status and others.”