Don't Mess With Taxes

This showed up in my snail mail box today:

Working for the nation's tax collector has never been an easy job. Internal Revenue Service employees say, however, that the agency's recent problems have made their jobs even more difficult and frustrating.

Some highlights from the article:

Budget cuts, hiring freezes and travel restrictions threaten IRS workers' ability to perform basic job functions.

The IRS as an agency has always been vilified, but now it's more personal, with the tax office and its employees at the center of potentially costly political gamesmanship.

Many in the agency fear that the attacks on their jobs, fiscally and politically, will undermine American taxpayers' historically high voluntary tax compliance rate.

If you don't subscribe to Bloomberg Businessweek, story co-author Richard Rubin discusses the piece in this video.

You also might find these items of interest:

• IRS' Koskinen says tax agency's troubles are over. No joke.
• IRS offers appointments at 10 Taxpayer Assistance Centers
• IRS headquarters hit by brief Washington, D.C., power outage