> “I know I’ve heard from a lot of people that this is low-grade work. ‘It’s not what I need to be doing,’” Ziegler said, according to the transcript. “I need you guys to think about this from a different perspective.”
> He said employees should approach their assignments “from a different mindset of, ‘how am I gonna do my job to the best of my abilities, because that’s what I want to do for the agency that I love: the IRS.’”
Ziegler should get his butt into the seat and process returns. Since he makes about 2270x's the salary of these people, he should be able to get through about 2270 returns in the same time it takes them to do one.
recursivedoubts 2 days ago [-]
Gotta wonder how many returns are gonna get run through unauthorized AI tools by IRS employees this year, leaking private financial information into future training sets.
joezydeco 2 days ago [-]
I haven't filed yet. Maybe some prompt injection in my 1040 will work some magic.
lovich 2 days ago [-]
We’re a bit past the deadline at this point. What would make you not have filed yet?
I’ve heard of people missing it but never the reasons why and I can’t imagine one since I always file ASAP to figure out if I owe or am owed money.
jasonpeacock 2 days ago [-]
If you don’t owe then you have 3yrs (IIRC) to file.
Of course, you also don’t get a refund until you file.
And you usually have to do all the same work to know whether you owe or not…
joezydeco 2 days ago [-]
I 4868 it and do it over the summer.
lovich 2 days ago [-]
I don’t know what that term means and I was more asking for the personal reason to file so late.
Like a literal, “I didn’t feel like it” is an answer, it’s just an action I can’t imagine taking so I was trying to understand your state of mind
joezydeco 1 days ago [-]
An IRS Form 4868 is a request to extend the filing date for six months. It's always granted and you're expected to pay your estimated taxes in the meantime.
I always owe, since I don't care to give this government a free loan of my money for a year or more at a time. I also have other documentation which isn't always ready by April of the filing year. So I file later on and pay whatever small amount of interest they charge, which is cheaper than a credit card or bank loan.
BoredPositron 2 days ago [-]
So it goes as planned.
solid_fuel 2 days ago [-]
"Government doesn't work, elect us and we'll prove it!"
It's tragic how well this fucking strategy keeps working in this country.
cguess 2 days ago [-]
Don't just limit it to the US, it's going very well in the UK too!
mjcohen 2 days ago [-]
As usual, anything Trump and his minions touch turns to garbage.
lokar 2 days ago [-]
Working as intended. Their goal is to degrade government
Vaslo 1 days ago [-]
Good - the less government, the better
jfengel 1 days ago [-]
This isn't less. This is the same amount, but much worse.
Meantime, government spending has gone from $6.8 trillion in 2024 to $7.4 trillion in 2026. We've gotten considerably more government.
y0eswddl 1 days ago [-]
not really, but the point is to get ppl to think like you do.
cosmicgadget 2 days ago [-]
> not going well
Maybe working as intended, these are high level HR and IT people being reassigned to grunt work. Probably just another way to get people to resign.
jmclnx 2 days ago [-]
Well Biden increased the IRS budget a lot, when the idiot was re-elected one of the first things he did was cut the IRS budget, took out Biden's increase plus some.
This was done to ensure the IRS cannot audit the very rich. That works because the auditing the rich is very expensive and you need highly skilled Auditors for that.
So, this is working as planned by Trump.
jmalicki 2 days ago [-]
> That works because the auditing the rich is very expensive
But it is "profitable".
It is one of the very few things the government does that generates short-term "profits" - every dollar spent auditing the rich and collecting from them generates more money than is spent, and we have never been close to break-even.
If you truly want to run the government like a business, increasing funding to IRS audits and collections is one of the hallmarks of what you would do.
EDIT: a lot of what the government does, and it should be everything the government does, is profitable, but it's more like "we spend this money, it increases GDP on some timescale, and then we get more taxes from it". This is short-term because it is more direct. The IRS audits bring in more tax revenue quite directly.
cuzezzzbbfofai 2 days ago [-]
Without the IRS we can't pay more taxes. Taxation is good.
cogman10 2 days ago [-]
Started in the second half of Biden's presidency. The republicans argued that the IRS was already overfunded in the first half and refused to allocate additional budget for them.
This isn't just a Trump thing, it's a Republican party thing.
elevation 2 days ago [-]
The ultra wealthy were already safe; it's much cheaper for the IRS accuse a middle class household with a couple W2s and a Doordash 1098 of inadequately tracking their mileage and fuel receipts than it is to review the reams of paperwork they'd receive when auditing any of the ultra-rich.
Meanwhile, even in an alternate reality where IRS was occasionally seizing some billionaire's entire life savings for cause, the proceeds would fund the federal government's operations for just a few hours. Hours! No amount of collected taxes make a difference when congress spends 2-3x what they collect!
triceratops 2 days ago [-]
> Meanwhile, even in an alternate reality where IRS was occasionally seizing some billionaire's entire life savings for cause, the proceeds would fund the federal government's operations for just a few hours.
Do you imagine that when the government spends, it feeds money into a furnace and it's gone forever? That's not how it works.
It pays people and companies. That money comes back as more taxes.
7jjjjjjj 2 days ago [-]
Congress doesn't spend to 2-3x what they collect. It's closer to 1.4x. Please don't spread misinformation.
elevation 1 days ago [-]
> It's closer to 1.4x.
Correct. The average was 1.37x revenue from the last decade[0], and the peak was 1.92x in 2020, not quite 2x.
[0] FY2015-2024
ofModel35ba3b 23 hours ago [-]
Good thing finance is merely a political meme and not a physical constant of reality.
Propaganda worked on finance bros. Bullets will too.
486sx33 2 days ago [-]
[dead]
Rendered at 18:27:24 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
> He said employees should approach their assignments “from a different mindset of, ‘how am I gonna do my job to the best of my abilities, because that’s what I want to do for the agency that I love: the IRS.’”
Ziegler should get his butt into the seat and process returns. Since he makes about 2270x's the salary of these people, he should be able to get through about 2270 returns in the same time it takes them to do one.
I’ve heard of people missing it but never the reasons why and I can’t imagine one since I always file ASAP to figure out if I owe or am owed money.
Of course, you also don’t get a refund until you file.
And you usually have to do all the same work to know whether you owe or not…
Like a literal, “I didn’t feel like it” is an answer, it’s just an action I can’t imagine taking so I was trying to understand your state of mind
I always owe, since I don't care to give this government a free loan of my money for a year or more at a time. I also have other documentation which isn't always ready by April of the filing year. So I file later on and pay whatever small amount of interest they charge, which is cheaper than a credit card or bank loan.
It's tragic how well this fucking strategy keeps working in this country.
Meantime, government spending has gone from $6.8 trillion in 2024 to $7.4 trillion in 2026. We've gotten considerably more government.
Maybe working as intended, these are high level HR and IT people being reassigned to grunt work. Probably just another way to get people to resign.
This was done to ensure the IRS cannot audit the very rich. That works because the auditing the rich is very expensive and you need highly skilled Auditors for that.
So, this is working as planned by Trump.
But it is "profitable".
It is one of the very few things the government does that generates short-term "profits" - every dollar spent auditing the rich and collecting from them generates more money than is spent, and we have never been close to break-even.
If you truly want to run the government like a business, increasing funding to IRS audits and collections is one of the hallmarks of what you would do.
EDIT: a lot of what the government does, and it should be everything the government does, is profitable, but it's more like "we spend this money, it increases GDP on some timescale, and then we get more taxes from it". This is short-term because it is more direct. The IRS audits bring in more tax revenue quite directly.
This isn't just a Trump thing, it's a Republican party thing.
Meanwhile, even in an alternate reality where IRS was occasionally seizing some billionaire's entire life savings for cause, the proceeds would fund the federal government's operations for just a few hours. Hours! No amount of collected taxes make a difference when congress spends 2-3x what they collect!
Do you imagine that when the government spends, it feeds money into a furnace and it's gone forever? That's not how it works.
It pays people and companies. That money comes back as more taxes.
Correct. The average was 1.37x revenue from the last decade[0], and the peak was 1.92x in 2020, not quite 2x.
[0] FY2015-2024
Propaganda worked on finance bros. Bullets will too.