Guess what? Those 87,000 armed goons new agents the IRS was authorized to hire thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act? They can’t find them. (Side note: apparently the “87,000 agents” thing was an initial Treasury estimate and IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel is annoyed people continue to repeat it as fact so we’ll cease doing so immediately except when referring back to past articles)
Hate to say we told you so but…scratch that, we do enjoy saying that. WE TOLD YOU SO. On August 9, 2022 we published “Where TF Is the IRS Supposed to Find 87,000 Agents?” and you don’t even need to read it to get the gist. Here are some highlights anyway:
So the IRS is struggling with recruitment and retention just like every other business and firm with a need for accountants in the last two years. In 2019, 74,454 people worked for the IRS. And they think they’re going to double that number in this market? With all due respect, HOW??
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On top of its aging workforce, the IRS has struggled to stay competitive salary-wise. Mind you they are competing with Walmart in some cases.
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Tell your nearest conservative uncle not to worry, there’s no way the IRS is going to find this many agents.
In “Qualified Applicants Aren’t Jumping To Work For the IRS,” VP of Research for the National Taxpayers Union Foundation (NTUF) Demian Brady breaks the news:
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is struggling to hire a workforce commensurate with the super-sized budget expansion that it recently received. According to a report from the Treasury Department, qualified candidates just aren’t jumping forward to work for the tax cops. It’s yet another example of how the IRS’s budget boost was hastily implemented, poorly designed, and dangerous for taxpayers.
To be fair, the Inflation Reduction Act-sponsored hiring plan is on a 10-year timeline. As Forbes columnist and friend of GC Peter J. Reilly commented on our earlier article, “It is a ramp up going out to 2031. So some of them are not in high school yet.” And the IRS isn’t looking only for experienced agent types who have better options post-public accounting, rather the agency planned to fill the majority of new positions with people to answer phones (cue PTSD groaning from #TaxTwitter) and process individual returns. New hires in the IRS Criminal Investigation category were supposed to make up less than 1% of the total tens of thousands of employees, adding about 300 more IRS-CI special agents to the agency’s existing 2,100. For more on that see: Anyone Looking Forward to a Highly Militarized IRS SWAT Team is Going to Be Sorely Disappointed.
Demian continues:
Government Executive reports that even though the IRS has been given “expedited hiring authority” to provide more flexibility in filling positions, it is actually taking longer to fill an IRS position than the average for the federal government. But the situation is even worse than that.
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) recently found that the IRS has encountered significant hurdles in attracting qualified candidates for roles it planned to fill. TIGTA notes that even the first wave of specialists the IRS hoped would spearhead its crusade against the wealthy have yet to be hired and onboarded, as applications have been “far below the IRS targeted goal.”
From that TIGTA report [PDF] dated March 11, 2024:
The two completed milestones are:
- Unified, enterprise-wide recruiting strategy developed. (Initiative 5.2)
The IRS has completed this milestone. An enterprise-wide recruiting strategy for revenue agents was developed and shared with the Human Capital Office and business units. Additionally, the IRS developed an enterprise-wide FY 2024 Strategic Recruitment Plan and is developing a Recruitment Guide outlining methodology, roles and responsibilities, and recruiting capabilities and
channels for key recruiting stakeholders. - Recruitment and hiring plan developed. (Initiative 5.5)
The IRS has completed this milestone. The IRS presented the finalized version of the FY 2024 Specialized Data Employee Recruitment and Hiring Plan to the Chief Data and Analytics Officer and Objective 5 Lead as well as key business unit stakeholders.
As of two years ago, the IRS was losing about 10,000 employees per year. They’d hoped to hire 10,000 employees by the end of fiscal 2023 and another 10,000 this year. But as we can see, that’s moving slow even by government standards.
I interviewed for Office of General Counsel a few years ago. It was undoubtedly my worst interview ever…I was rambling about state and local tax, my audio was cutting out, I said my excitement for an LB&I role when the role was for SB/SE and the closest LB&I office was 500 miles away. My interviewers said something along the lines of “you aren’t going to learn a lot tax-wise, but it is fun going after these people in court” and made sure that I knew they were “fully vested” i.e. checked out. I didn’t even send a thank you figuring there was 0 chance of being offered.
I have heard similar stories from other people. 5 months later I get an email offer for the role, but turned it down for a law firm offer. Dollas make me holla.
The pay at higher levels is not terrible, never going to match a B4 senior manager as a high level revenue agent but still doable for a lot of people. I think for the middle aged who get squeezed out as firms downsize it has some appeal of stability. But the process is truly terrible. Two months to even get the first tentative offer then 2-4 months after to get a firm offer and start date. If you are unemployed, the timing is really atrocious – they need people but hey wait for us while unemployment runs out and you are required to look for jobs elsewhere to even get the pittance that offers! If you are not unemployed, dealing with their process makes you want to keep your job or keep looking elsewhere.
IRS needs to get their house in order before they bring on new recruits, middle aged or otherwise. The IT system is still a mess after years of attempting to upgrade and implement systems that work. The IRS staff that haven’t retired or abandoned ship when the ACA disaster created total chaos aren’t top notch and feel easily threatened. Still the IRS fails to hire actual competent staff and then wonder why no one applies?