The IRS Moves Atlanta Employees to an Office That Makes the Rat-Infested Office Look Pretty Good

Posted on by Going Concern News Desk
IRS office with a rat

If you’ve been keeping up with the news cycle (or if you caught last Monday’s Monday Morning News Brief), you’ve heard about the situation down in Atlanta involving IRS workers at the rat-infested Chamblee office. It’s been going on for a while now but action has finally been taken after the National Treasury Employees Union got the local news to cover it.

Then Georgia Senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff along with Representative Henry C. “Hank” Johnson, Jr. wrote a strongly worded letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and IRS CEO Frank Bisignano asking them to address this matter expediently and allow IRS staff from the affected office to telework in the meantime. Not a huge ask really, I think we all agree working among rodents is an unacceptable working condition.

The good news is the IRS listened. The bad news, according to the most recent information from NTEU, is that the new facility also sucks. Fun.

IRS’s solution? Move some employees from one rat-infested office to another—plus, the facility is also known for water leaks, mold, roaches and water bugs.

Are roaches and water bugs not the same thing? Nevermind, immaterial.

WSB2 is on it again:

President Trump issued an ironclad return-to-office mandate for federal employees in January of 2025. As far as we know, the IRS still allows for temporary 90-day telework arrangements in cases of significant hardship if approved by their overlords of human capital. To be clear, the IRS’s idea of significant hardship is escaping domestic violence or recovering from an organ transplant (that’s not hyperbole, those are actual examples they gave).

BTW what happened with that hantavirus outbreak? Should we be paying attention to that?

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IRS Commish: There’s a Big Difference Between Hiding Money Offshore and Sophisticated International Tax Planning

In a speech before the 23rd Annual Institute on Current Issues in International Taxation, Washington, DC, Doug Shulman (link not yet available on the website) explained how rich dudes schlepping money to Switzerland (but not any more!) or Hong Kong is not even close to the same thing as “Google’s Irrationally Exuberant Tax Strategy.”

As I have said before, I draw a sharp distinction between rooting out individuals hiding their money in foreign tax havens and the IRS and Treasury creating ground rules for multinational corporations operating in a global environment.

It’s no secret that multinational corporations engage in sophisticated international tax planning. We recognize that much of this is perfectly legal and many businesses are trying to get it right. Of course, some are pushing the envelope too far and it’s here that we have issues. Our goal is to differentiate between the two; to be on top of our game in this analysis; and to ensure corporations are compliant with the tax law and stay compliant.

IRS Checks Sole Proprietorships Off Its “To Audit” List

This morning we shared some best practices on how to keep your ass out of hot water should an IRS audit befall you. The concern is that the government spending is out of control, huge deficits yada yada yada, the IRS will be knocking on more doors.


For the most part, everyone has been covered – large corporations, millionaires, possibly temptresses, the list is thorough.

Well, now it appears that the last entity type standing, the sole proprietorship will join the rest as an IRS target. IRS-criticizer-in-chief J. Russell George’s TIGTA issued another report but this time it cites sole proprietorships for “$68 billion of the $345 billion tax gap in 2001,” in underreported income. Web CPA reports George’s thoughts:

“Sole proprietors who underreport their income can create an unfair burden on honest taxpayers and diminish the public’s respect for the tax system,” said TIGTA Inspector General J. Russell George in a statement. “It is imperative that the IRS institutes policies to address this problem.”

How’s this for addressing a problem? The Internal Revenue Code, you my have heard, is mind-numbingly complex. Sole proprietorships, out of all the entity structures, are the least equipped to ensure compliance with the tax law. Auditing more of them will not result in increased compliance but rather enormous costs to their businesses. As for “diminish the public’s respect for the tax system,” didn’t that ship sail ages ago?

IRS to Step up Audits of Sole Proprietors [Web CPA]

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