Pandemic-Challenged IRS in Line for Big Funding Boost (Podcast)

It has been a challenging year for the IRS, which is dealing with yet another prolonged tax-filing season while also distributing pandemic relief payments to hundreds of millions of people.

Those challenges come at a time when the agency has struggled for years to carry out its core duties of auditing returns, collecting taxes, and answering its phones due to underfunding and staffing shortages.

President Joe Biden is seeking to reverse these trends through a substantial increase to the IRS’s budget—he asked Congress to boost the agency’s baseline funding by more than 10% to $13.2 billion. The president hopes a ...