Daily Episode 214 - IRS Collapse (and announcing a short hiatus)
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Why is the host apologizing and announcing a short hiatus?
Also, if you've been with us for a while and you're enjoying the content, please join us on Patreon. We would love to see you there. There's a link as always in the description. Hey folks, I do have an episode prepared for today, but first I want to apologize. I know this episode is late and also announce a probable short hiatus from the daily episodes. We received some horrible news regarding the help of a family member this week, which I'm not going to get into details here at all out of respect for them, but needless to say, this is going to require some serious mental energy and time and dedication on my part. And there are a few things in my life that I will be putting on the back burner, at least in this time.
So it may not be long. It may just be a few days. It may just be a week or two, but I will be back. Anyway, today, moving on to an episode, this may be quicker than normal. I thought it was an interesting example of catabolic collapse happening in the government today. This was an article posted to Mother Jones, a narrative article about what's happening inside of the IRS. We know that we have a highly bureaucratic government with massive institutions, hundreds of thousands of employees required to run these various institutions. We know that Doge came in and did a number on many of those institutions. We know that the trust in these organizations, the faith in them to do what they were set out to do, has declined dramatically.
That's not just happened in the Trump era. Many different parts of our bureaucratic systems have been corrupted, slowed down, disorganized for a long time. And that is a part of what catabolic collapse is. It's accelerating now. And the IRS is a massive piece of the institutional infrastructure puzzle. What happens if you remove... the organization that collects taxes, right, which is then distributed out to all of the other institutions and organizations to keep the country running. Now, I'm not saying that the IRS has been removed or is being removed, but it is being highly affected, and its future, along with other parts of our government, are, as always, in question. So let's talk about this. It's a rather lengthy article.
I won't be going through the entire thing. It was posted on July 28. It's titled The IRS is imploding. The CEO says the agency is proving it's possible to have less people and better results.
What is “catabolic collapse” and how does it apply to the IRS?
Thus is sort of the trend outside of the government right now as well in tech and other companies trying to take advantage of AI. But let's read a I'm going to read much of this. I'll skip over parts because of its length, and I will post it so that you can read more about it if you would like. Here we go. and of course, interest and fines. After reviewing the somewhat cryptic letter, we realized that we did not, in fact, owe any money. The IRS had simply failed to credit quarterly payments that we'd made on time. Because we had all the bank records, it seemed as if this would be a relatively straightforward problem to fix, until I picked up the phone and called the IRS. Two hours on hold later, I gave up.
When I tried again a few days later, the outgoing message informed me, Due to the high call volume, we are unable to answer your call. Please call back later today or tomorrow. And I was disconnected. After several more fruitless phone calls over the next week, I asked my accountant for advice. Unfortunately, she said, the dedicated lines for tax practitioners were going unanswered too. She had never seen it so bad. She had clients who had serious issues to resolve and there was no contact available at all. At that point, I realized the IRS was finally imploding. Tax professionals, journalists, including those from Mother Jones, members of Congress, and former IRS commissioners had warned this would happen.
When Elon Musk's Doge service swept into the federal government like a buzzsaw in February last year, one of the first agencies it targeted for wholesale destruction was the IRS. Doge slashed about a third of the entire IRS workforce in just a few short months.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
Why is the host apologizing and announcing a short hiatus?
0:00–2:42
2
What is “catabolic collapse” and how does it apply to the IRS?
2:42–6:19
3
How did the author’s personal IRS phone call illustrate the agency’s failure?
6:19–8:42
4
What evidence does the Mother Jones article provide about IRS staffing cuts?
8:42–11:02
5
How have congressional leaders described the impact of the IRS workforce reductions?
11:02–13:47
6
What do recent IRS performance metrics reveal about call wait times and service quality?
13:47–14:31
7
How have technical and mail‑room cuts further hampered IRS operations?
14:31–14:35