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Lara W's avatar

I've been doing taxes seasonally for a few years now. We desperately need more folks at the IRS as you simply cannot get through to a human being anymore. Congress also needs to stop fiddling with the tax code every year. The Trump administration made things so much more convoluted for businesses especially. These tax cuts are scheduled to sunset in 2025 and the industry is waiting with bated breath to see if they are made permanent.

Given all these constant tax code changes and inability to resolve tax issues in a timely way due to chronic underfunding of the IRS, the tax preparation industry is struggling to recruit and retain employees. As a result, many high-maintenance clients get dropped by their accounting firms every year. This also ends up being an equity issue as the lower income folks cannot find representation when the IRS comes knocking. Then you have the bottom-feeder fly-by-night tax prep operations luring naive or willfully blind folks with tax refund advances for shoddy or even fraudulent work. A LOT of the IRS cases are outright fraud committed not necessarily by the taxpayer - they are just rubes sucked in to the idea of fast, easy money by charlatans who file false returns on their behalf. There is also plenty of fraud committed by taxpayers themselves and I have had to turn away potential clients who wanted me to fib to the IRS on their behalf. Its a jungle out there!

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Alpha Bull's avatar

Tax enforcement of EITC and Law enforcement of Drugs is the same racket. Easy targets, easy prosecution and the staffers rack up the stats and have evidence of "doing their jobs". Good policing and good tax enforcement, going after the REAL criminals, is incredibly difficult and a lot of times yields nothing.

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