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Isn't the IRS on the chopping block? I know they killed the free tax filing feature for citizen. I cannot keep track anymore. Reading through the article, it's

Isn't the IRS on the chopping block? I know they killed the free tax filing feature for citizen. I cannot keep track anymore. Reading through the article, it's not one or two machines but 8 Blackwell nodes, so quite some firepower for compute. Wonder what part of the audit or tax prep requires a GPU farm.

enos_feedler 2y ago
maybe they'll just do all our taxes for us?
- manquer 2y ago
  A lot of developed countries do this. They just sent you your assessment automatically with they you think you/they owe if anything, you need to file anything only there if you believe there is difference . The US system is pretty backwards really, most of the taxes are deducted at source anyway the system already has a good idea of your income/taxes owed. If IRS calculate returns at scale using tax deducted at source and employer info(W-2 etc) , unless you dispute their calculations there is no need for audit or paperwork at all reducing the cost of running IRS too. This kills intuit so will never happen, but if it does it would be the single biggest revenue boost to the Government easily in tens if not 100's of billions of dollars.
  - econ 2y ago
    Yes, every few years I press ok. They want me to do it every year but that just seems like a lot of work. So far they got everything right. I really want this for small businesses in real time. The payment processor already deals with most refunds. It would be nice to fill taxes with each purchase, payment or invoice automatically. Should automate the payments too! Give them the (approved) work schedule, let them provide a clock card machine. Pay the salary end of the shift. Why should we have a party dragging out a transaction? Just complete it immediately and ideally in isolation. Then they might as well also run the bank, the payment processor and the recruitment agency. People here in NL are afraid to start a business not because they can't deliver the product or service or that they can't find customers, they are afraid of the tax office.
- wavefunction 2y ago
  you owe elon musk 80 years of your life - x.gov
- jauntywundrkind 2y ago
  Direct File I think helped some. Deleted by Musk.
mullingitover 2y ago
If you're wondering if the "Efficiency Department" is actually about efficiency, or if they're just cosplaying political Santa Claus, look for cuts to the IRS. The IRS is the most bang for the buck government department. Every dollar spent there nets out many more, because they're chronically under-resourced to audit the whales who can trivially hide their tax obligations. Naturally whenever there's a hint that the department could be even close to properly funded, the media, overwhelmingly owned by the class of people who evade taxes as a sport, gin up controversy. It's no wonder that the richest man in the history of the world has bought his way into the building and been provided with gasoline and matches.
- yostrovs 2y ago
  The IRS Individual Master File, running on IBM mainframes, may be the oldest software alive. Perhaps there's a need for an update. https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/636196-oldest-software-system-in-continuous-use https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/636196-ol...
  - xethos 2y ago
    Yeah, I'm sure there are no weird edge cases in America's byzantine tax laws that have been spotted and squashed in the software Sounds like fun to find and fix them all again though!
  - mullingitover 2y ago
    I agree! However, the brain trust Musk is running is absolutely not qualified to do it. They're getting tripped up on basic COBOL trivia[1]. [1] https://www.fastcompany.com/91278597/elon-musk-doge-cobol-language https://www.fastcompany.com/91278597/elon-musk-doge-cobol-la...
  - hindsightbias 2y ago
    Why update what isn’t broken?
    - wmf 2y ago
jauntywundrkind 2y ago
The Tech Right ascendant (in this admin) claims AI is going to magically fix & improve systems, will let us fire thousands, tens or hundreds of thousands of people Some of this is just a war against the middle class. But more seriously this is a desire to let unregulated unchecked systems draw judgement upon people. This is like the UK postal crisis, where the UK has long held a legal system that assumed computerized systems are correct and not questionable. Once the AI is in power, it can be tuned to the biases of the ultra-wealthy tech-right. Technocratic dominion.
throw0101d 2y ago
> Isn't the IRS on the chopping block? I know they killed the free tax filing feature for citizen. I cannot keep track anymore. The IRS is mentioned in Project 2025's chapter on Treasury: * https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_CHAPTER-22.pdf https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_CHA... See "TAX ADMINISTRATION" section. Some points with-in that: > Doubling the IRS? The Inflation Reduction Act contains a radical $80 billion expansion of the IRS—enough to double the size of its workforce.34 Unless Congress reverses this policy, the IRS will become much more intrusive and impose still greater costs on the American people. […] > Management. The IRS has approximately 81,000 employees.36 Of those, only two are presidential appointments—the Commissioner and the Chief Counsel.37 As a practical matter, it is impossible for these two officials to overcome bureau- cratic inertia and to implement policy changes that the IRS bureaucracy wants to impede. That is why, notwithstanding decades of sound and fury, almost nothing has changed at the IRS. On the second point, "Management": who doesn't / wouldn't want more political apparatchiks with-in the tax system? As for the second point: the IRS has a resource problem (partly due to retirements), and needs to hire a bunch of folks now to be able to train them and pass on institutional knowledge: > “When we hear 87,000 agents, it sounds like a horrifying army of people. But it’s what they need to maintain, because people are exiting in volumes,” says Robert Cordasco, a certified public accountant and founder of Cordasco & Co. in Savannah, Georgia. “I don’t know how much it adds as much as it gets us to the status quo.” * https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/31/irs-is-not-hiring-an-army-of-auditors-whats-really-happening.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/31/irs-is-not-hiring-an-army-of... * https://www.journalofaccountancy.com/news/2024/jun/expert-warns-irs-has-what-it-needs-to-pursue-more-audits.html https://www.journalofaccountancy.com/news/2024/jun/expert-wa... A story from before the funding bump: > Congress asked the IRS to report on why it audits the poor more than the affluent. Its response is that it doesn’t have enough money and people to audit the wealthy properly. So it’s not going to. * https://www.propublica.org/article/irs-sorry-but-its-just-easier-and-cheaper-to-audit-the-poor https://www.propublica.org/article/irs-sorry-but-its-just-ea...
ubereverywhere 2y ago
[dead]

enos_feedler 2y ago

maybe they'll just do all our taxes for us?

manquer 2y ago
A lot of developed countries do this. They just sent you your assessment automatically with they you think you/they owe if anything, you need to file anything only there if you believe there is difference . The US system is pretty backwards really, most of the taxes are deducted at source anyway the system already has a good idea of your income/taxes owed. If IRS calculate returns at scale using tax deducted at source and employer info(W-2 etc) , unless you dispute their calculations there is no need for audit or paperwork at all reducing the cost of running IRS too. This kills intuit so will never happen, but if it does it would be the single biggest revenue boost to the Government easily in tens if not 100's of billions of dollars.
- econ 2y ago
  Yes, every few years I press ok. They want me to do it every year but that just seems like a lot of work. So far they got everything right. I really want this for small businesses in real time. The payment processor already deals with most refunds. It would be nice to fill taxes with each purchase, payment or invoice automatically. Should automate the payments too! Give them the (approved) work schedule, let them provide a clock card machine. Pay the salary end of the shift. Why should we have a party dragging out a transaction? Just complete it immediately and ideally in isolation. Then they might as well also run the bank, the payment processor and the recruitment agency. People here in NL are afraid to start a business not because they can't deliver the product or service or that they can't find customers, they are afraid of the tax office.
wavefunction 2y ago
you owe elon musk 80 years of your life - x.gov
jauntywundrkind 2y ago
Direct File I think helped some. Deleted by Musk.

mullingitover 2y ago

If you're wondering if the "Efficiency Department" is actually about efficiency, or if they're just cosplaying political Santa Claus, look for cuts to the IRS. The IRS is the most bang for the buck government department. Every dollar spent there nets out many more, because they're chronically under-resourced to audit the whales who can trivially hide their tax obligations. Naturally whenever there's a hint that the department could be even close to properly funded, the media, overwhelmingly owned by the class of people who evade taxes as a sport, gin up controversy. It's no wonder that the richest man in the history of the world has bought his way into the building and been provided with gasoline and matches.

yostrovs 2y ago
The IRS Individual Master File, running on IBM mainframes, may be the oldest software alive. Perhaps there's a need for an update. https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/636196-oldest-software-system-in-continuous-use https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/636196-ol...
- xethos 2y ago
  Yeah, I'm sure there are no weird edge cases in America's byzantine tax laws that have been spotted and squashed in the software Sounds like fun to find and fix them all again though!
- mullingitover 2y ago
  I agree! However, the brain trust Musk is running is absolutely not qualified to do it. They're getting tripped up on basic COBOL trivia[1]. [1] https://www.fastcompany.com/91278597/elon-musk-doge-cobol-language https://www.fastcompany.com/91278597/elon-musk-doge-cobol-la...
- hindsightbias 2y ago
  Why update what isn’t broken?
  - wmf 2y ago

jauntywundrkind 2y ago

The Tech Right ascendant (in this admin) claims AI is going to magically fix & improve systems, will let us fire thousands, tens or hundreds of thousands of people Some of this is just a war against the middle class. But more seriously this is a desire to let unregulated unchecked systems draw judgement upon people. This is like the UK postal crisis, where the UK has long held a legal system that assumed computerized systems are correct and not questionable. Once the AI is in power, it can be tuned to the biases of the ultra-wealthy tech-right. Technocratic dominion.

throw0101d 2y ago

> Isn't the IRS on the chopping block? I know they killed the free tax filing feature for citizen. I cannot keep track anymore. The IRS is mentioned in Project 2025's chapter on Treasury: * https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_CHAPTER-22.pdf https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_CHA... See "TAX ADMINISTRATION" section. Some points with-in that: > Doubling the IRS? The Inflation Reduction Act contains a radical $80 billion expansion of the IRS—enough to double the size of its workforce.34 Unless Congress reverses this policy, the IRS will become much more intrusive and impose still greater costs on the American people. […] > Management. The IRS has approximately 81,000 employees.36 Of those, only two are presidential appointments—the Commissioner and the Chief Counsel.37 As a practical matter, it is impossible for these two officials to overcome bureau- cratic inertia and to implement policy changes that the IRS bureaucracy wants to impede. That is why, notwithstanding decades of sound and fury, almost nothing has changed at the IRS. On the second point, "Management": who doesn't / wouldn't want more political apparatchiks with-in the tax system? As for the second point: the IRS has a resource problem (partly due to retirements), and needs to hire a bunch of folks now to be able to train them and pass on institutional knowledge: > “When we hear 87,000 agents, it sounds like a horrifying army of people. But it’s what they need to maintain, because people are exiting in volumes,” says Robert Cordasco, a certified public accountant and founder of Cordasco & Co. in Savannah, Georgia. “I don’t know how much it adds as much as it gets us to the status quo.” * https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/31/irs-is-not-hiring-an-army-of-auditors-whats-really-happening.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/31/irs-is-not-hiring-an-army-of... * https://www.journalofaccountancy.com/news/2024/jun/expert-warns-irs-has-what-it-needs-to-pursue-more-audits.html https://www.journalofaccountancy.com/news/2024/jun/expert-wa... A story from before the funding bump: > Congress asked the IRS to report on why it audits the poor more than the affluent. Its response is that it doesn’t have enough money and people to audit the wealthy properly. So it’s not going to. * https://www.propublica.org/article/irs-sorry-but-its-just-easier-and-cheaper-to-audit-the-poor https://www.propublica.org/article/irs-sorry-but-its-just-ea...

ubereverywhere 2y ago

[dead]