"Internal Revenue Service" by saturnism is marked with CC BY-SA 2.0.
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) can apparently ignore deadlines. Perhaps it should be assessed penalties and interest for each day late as regular Americans must do when they miss IRS deadlines.
Friday Feb. 17 was the deadline for the IRS to provide details on how they were going to spend the $80 billion shoveled to the agency by Democrats. They went ahead and ignored the deadline. An IRS spokesman said they’ll get around to it.
As reported by the Journal of Accountancy,
The IRS will not meet the Friday deadline imposed by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to turn over its spending plan for approximately $80 billion that Congress budgeted for it to spend over 10 years as part of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, P.L. 117-169.
In an email to the JofA on Thursday afternoon, IRS spokesman Eric Smith said the agency has been working to prepare the Strategic Operating Plan and “expects to deliver the plan to the Secretary in coming weeks.”
That means the IRS will miss the deadline that Yellen set in a letter dated Aug. 17, 2022, and sent to Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo. In that letter, Yellen said a “six-month operational plan detailing how these resources will be deployed over the course of the next decade” was crucial. She directed that the plan be sent to her in six months, or by Feb. 17, 2023.
Specifically, she told the IRS “to work closely with the Deputy Secretary to identify specific operational initiatives and associated timelines that will improve taxpayer service, modernize technology, and increase equity in our system of tax administration by pursuing tax evasion by those at the top who today do not pay their tax bill.”
This is the latest example of the Internal Revenue Service just doing whatever it wants to do, without consequence. The IRS physically destroyed 30 million taxpayer documents and then didn’t tell anyone about it. The only reason the public is now aware of this: a visit from the agency watchdog, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. These were active documents submitted by taxpayers attempting to resolve their tax obligations. The IRS destroyed the documents and hoped nobody would notice. They refuse to share their internal decision memo with congress.
Another questionable recent action by the IRS: their legally dubious declaration of a “transition year” for the IRS 1099-K paperwork burden imposed by Democrats that is in law as of Jan. 1, 2023.
The IRS had issued a “GET READY” notice on December 6, 2022. The agency put the public on notice to get ready to deal with 1099-K forms.
But just 17 days later on Dec. 23, the IRS said never mind, 2023 is a “transition year” and declared people did not need to comply with the law passed by congress for 2023.
The agency just waved a wand and that’s that.
Just days prior as the 2022 end-of-year omnibus bill was under consideration, House and Senate Democrats were on the verge of passing a fix to the 1099-K problem they created. But suddenly the legislative fix vanished and the issue went completely unaddressed by congress.
Even though the IRS had just issued this GET READY notice on Dec. 6, the agency suddenly said it would not enforce the 1099-K law in 2023, conveniently giving political cover to Democrats and unethically removing the pressure on congress to act.
The IRS will do what it wants.
The Feb. 17 blown deadline raises further questions about the “no new audits on those making less than $400,000″ pledge from President Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. If the Internal Revenue Service is going to ignore the firm Feb. 17 spending plan deadline set by Yellen, why should anyone believe her letter to the agency about audits will be followed?
(It won’t.)