(Which means "right off the bat" that they could never read this, but it still needs to be pointed out...).As noted here, J. Russell George, Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, stated recently that the Internal Revenue Service screwed up in a major way when it eliminated the TeleFile program for filing tax returns in 2005.
(I realize this probably isn’t a burning hot issue because tax returns are probably the last thing on people’s minds this time of year, but it’s important to note this anyway.)
See, the IRS decided that maintaining the TeleFile program (by which someone files their returns by phone) was too costly to maintain, and they thought that when the program was eliminated, everyone would then turn automatically to filing returns via the Internet. Well, as a result of this miscalculation, low and middle income taxpayers are paying millions of dollars in fees to file their tax returns, as noted in the story.
And it’s not as if the illustrious (warning: sarcasm alert) 109th Repug congress wasn’t told previously that this was going on, but did nothing in response (page 6 here).
And who was the genius in charge of the IRS when this decision was made? Why, that would be Mark W. Everson, former commissioner of the IRS (information on this guy can be accessed from here; easy to see how he could have picked up that smirk from Dubya).
Will I ever learn of an agency head under Bushco who is actually competent? I’m not holding my breath.
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