Etched into the facade of the Internal Revenue Service's headquarters, just above a trio of limestone arches, is a quote from Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.: 'Taxes are what we pay for a civilized society.' But today's IRS, weakened by the Trump administration's budget cuts, may not be well-equipped to collect. The office of the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, a federal watchdog, put out a memo in January highlighting its 'concerns' about the IRS's readiness for the 2026 filing season, most of which are downstream from staffing. The agency had more than 100,000 staffers (accountants, lawyers, customer-service specialists, and more) toward the end of 2024; a year later, firings and buyouts had lowered that number to about 81,000. That it lost nearly a fifth of its employees will likely affect its ability to tackle existing problems, such as backlogs of returns and outdated technology, and introduce new ones that will slow it even further. The...
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