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Lots of IRS Workers Will Have to Trudge Back to Work From Mandatory Unpaid Vacation

Posted on by Jason Bramwell

It’s hard enough being an IRS employee during tax season when you’re receiving a paycheck. But having to work as the start of tax season nears without being paid and having to resort to selling some of your belongings on eBay or Craigslist to make ends meet ROYALLY SUCKS.

But this is the current reality for thousands of IRS workers—and scores of other federal employees—who are caught in the middle of the government shutdown, now in its 27th day, but have to return to their jobs not knowing when they’ll be paid next.

The Associated Press reports:

The Internal Revenue Service is recalling about 46,000 of its employees furloughed by the government shutdown — nearly 60 percent of its workforce — to handle tax returns and pay out refunds. The employees won’t be paid during the shutdown.

With the official start of the tax filing season coming Jan. 28, the Trump administration has promised that taxpayers owed refunds will be paid on time, despite the disruption in government services caused by the partial shutdown now in its fourth week.

In an interview with CNN, IRS analyst Lorie McCann chuckled when she was asked about President Trump’s ridiculous comment last weekend that he can “relate” to federal workers who can’t pay their bills on time and that those employees will “make adjustments, they always do” to their finances.

“This is our reality. Our bills have to be paid. We want to do our jobs. As federal employees, we are a dedicated workforce, and we’re hurting. If we apply for unemployment and if Congress passes a bill and is signed to say that we’ll receive back pay, then we have to pay back the unemployment. If we go for a second job, we have guidelines for outside employment.”

On Jan. 16, the president signed a bill guaranteeing back pay to federal workers furloughed during the government shutdown, and he reportedly let his appreciation for those employees be known during the bill signing:

The new IRS shutdown plan states that 46,052 agency employees will be called back to work, of the total workforce of 80,265. That plan will go into effect once the Treasury Department issues an official notice, according to the AP. Only about 10,000 employees are deemed essential and have already been working during the shutdown.

The Washington Post reported that the IRS will not perform audits during the shutdown, although the agency has years to audit a tax return after it is filed. Walk-in taxpayer assistance centers will remain closed, and the plan says there will be a reduction in tax-related assistance and support for disaster victims. However, the IRS will continue to conduct criminal investigations.

While we’ve poked fun at the IRS from time to time over the years, we really hope these workers—and the other federal employees impacted by the shutdown—get paid soon.

“I’m OK today, but I have to think about tomorrow, and tomorrow I have no control over that. None. I have no control over what’s going to happen. And that’s not a good feeling,” IRS worker Nora Brooks told the AP recently.

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For Some Unknown Reason, The IRS Confiscated a Nearly Worthless Scarface Poster in Young Buck Raid

Earlier in the month you may recall the story of hip-hop artist Young Buck being on the wrong side of a IRS raid that involved some of those shiny shotguns.

At that time, we learned that the agents seized several items – recording equipment, jewelry, furniture, his platinum wall plaques – even Mr Buck’s PlayStation (he says it was his son’s but, come on).

Anyway, we now learn that agents also confiscated a $31k Breitling Bentley watch AND a Scarface movie poster with an approximate value of…$10.


We’re not too familiar with IRS protocols, so perhaps when someone’s house is raided, the standard operating procedure is to take literally everything. The furniture. The porno collection. Worthless movie posters that there are literally tens of thousands of copies of. It all goes.

Presumably, the agents could have sold the poster to a kid on the street for a few bucks so they could get coffee but it would still be only enough money for one or two coffees. Or maybe it was enough for one (one!) cover at the local strip joint for the post-raid celebration. Or maybe on of the guys/gals really, really, really wanted that poster. Who knows?

Motivation aside, it certainly serves as another fine example of IRS shrewdness when it comes to collection efforts.

$31,000 watch among items seized from Young Buck’s home [The Tennessean]

Did You Know The IRS Is Four Times More Popular Than Congress?

It’s a pretty sad reflection of the current state of affairs in my homebase of Washington, DC if the IRS, Paris Hilton, Nixon circa Watergate and the BP oil spill have a higher approval rating than the 112th Congress.


According to Chris Cillizza in WaPo, the only thing less popular than Congress is Fidel Castro.

And as we already know, the Fed is less popular than the IRS too.

Area Man Under the Assumption That Firing an IRS Examiner Was Within His Powers as an American Citizen

Mining obscure tax court cases for blog posts during this slow time of year, Joe Kristan discovered this little gem:

In the April 4, 2008, letter petitioner stated that respondent [IRS] had repeatedly refused to answer his questions regarding Code sections that define income and property received as income and establish respondent’s “Delegated Constitutional and Legislated Lawful authority”. The letter contained meaningless language, for example: “I do hereby give you notice that you, and all you are, are Fired from any and all representation of my private affairs without recourse“.