The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is gearing up for a serious infusion of funding.
As part of the Inflation Reduction Act signed into law by President Joe Biden last August, the IRS is slated to receive nearly $80 billion by 2031; money intended to be doled out across four areas: taxpayer services, enforcement, operations support and business systems modernization.
And, as recently reported by Government Executive, the IRS is soliciting some help from inside and outside the government to help the agency gear up for this “unprecedented surge in funding and a corresponding surge in hiring.”
The funding could be used to hire as many as 87,000 employees, backfilling vacant positions and replacing those expected to leave in coming years. The IRS has signed two contracts to assist with the recruiting and onboarding of these thousands of employees the organization plans to bring on, according to Government Executive.
The first will task the vendor with preparing and posting job announcements, determining a list of qualified candidates and making tentative offers, while the second will require the contractor to assist with background investigations.
Hurdles to Clear
The first contract the IRS signed “will tackle a key challenge the agency will face as it aims to increase its rolls,” wrote Government Executive’s Eric Katz, noting that nearly 600,000 individuals applied for IRS jobs in 2022.
“The agency filtered through those prospective hires to make tentative offers to just 46,000 people,” Katz wrote. “Less than half of that total, or just 3% of the original applicant pool, ultimately accepted offers and were onboard at the agency.”
The IRS will face other challenges on the way to hitting its hiring targets.
One significant hurdle is the lengthy process to bring on a new employee, wrote Katz, who pointed out that an original version of the Inflation Reduction Act included direct hire authority for the agency, “but lawmakers ultimately stripped the provision from the bill.”
The IRS instead went to the Office of Personnel Management to request the special authority, which allows agencies to bypass many of the hurdles that typically slow down the hiring process, Government Executive reported, adding that OPM has granted IRS permission to make the quick hires for up to 10,000 taxpayer service and enforcement positions per year through 2027. It also allowed for the expedited process for 4,500 positions in operations support.
As Katz reported, National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins has told Congress that having direct hire authority has allowed the IRS to cut the time from posting an agency job to onboarding a new hire in half. Collins also cautioned that the expected hiring surge could have deleterious short-term effects as existing employees are taken away from their day-to-day responsibilities to help train new workers, noting that “staff increases come with growing pains.”
Despite the efforts to improve the agency’s capacity for hiring, the IRS is already tempering expectations, Katz wrote.
For example, the organization initially set a goal of filling 19,000 positions in fiscal year 2023, but its HR team has since said that a realistic net gain of staff members this year would be between 5,000 and 10,000. IRS officials have also said “there is no risk of violating its pledge to not use its new funding to target taxpayers earning less than $400,000 per year,” as employee attrition and hiring challenges will limit its ability to conduct more audits, Katz reported.
And, with a freshly minted majority in the U.S. Congress, House Republicans figure to add a degree of difficulty to the IRS’ hiring efforts.
The agency “will face near constant headwinds as it seeks to implement the Inflation Reduction Act, including from congressional Republicans who have made it a top priority to claw back its funding infusion,” Katz wrote.
Indeed, the first piece of legislation House Republicans introduced upon cementing a majority seeks to rescind the tens of billions the Inflation Reduction Act allocated to the IRS.
As Katz pointed out, the bill is “dead on arrival in the Senate, and President Biden has said he would veto it anyway, but the fight will likely continue as lawmakers debate fiscal 2024 appropriations.”
In the meantime, he wrote, “[the] IRS is not wasting time in using its funds to recruit new employees.”
27 January 2023
Category
HR News Article