- The IRS wants to hire 10,000 workers as businesses around the country try to staff up.
- The Wall Street Journal reports that the agency is competing with firms like Target and McDonald's.
- The IRS has been dealing with chronic understaffing and underfunding, leading to a backlog of returns.
In the midst of mountains of paper and millions of unprocessed tax returns, the IRS has said that it needs more workers.
In early March, the agency said it was taking an "all hands on deck" approach to hire 10,000 new workers and combat its mounting challenges as the 2022 tax season swings into full gear.
The understaffed and underfunded agency is competing with an already crowded labor market, a problem that many companies say they're dealing with. In February, about 4.4 million workers quit across the country — the ninth month in a row of near-record quitting levels.
Part of the agency's hiring initiative was holding job fairs in Austin, Texas; Kansas City, Missouri; and Ogden, Utah.
The Wall Street Journal's Richard Rubin spoke to some of the applicants and hiring officials in Ogden, Utah. Agency officials told Rubin that they're competing with firms like Target, Amazon, and McDonald's for potential new hires.
Both Amazon and Target pay at least $15 an hour; according to job postings, the IRS pays a minimum of $15.61 an hour. According to the Wall Street Journal, the agency is competing with McDonald's tuition benefits, one additional perk the company offered as firms competed against one another to hire during staffing shortages.
Labor shortages aren't a new issue for the IRS: A report from the Inspector General of Tax Administration said that, as of August 2021, the IRS had only met 67% of its staffing goal — onboarding 3,660 workers in 2021 when it wanted 5,473. Some of the issues the agency faced in hiring included its pay for "low-grade clerical positions," like mail clerks, per the report.
"These employees can find similar entry-level positions in private industry for higher pay," the Inspector General wrote.
But, compared to big companies upping wages, the IRS is dealing with a few unique problems. Its aging technology — and piles of paper — make it hard to compete with companies offering remote work, as Rubin reports. It's also dealing with a budget that's shrunk by about 23% since 2010, according to the Tax Policy Center. Meanwhile, the agency's workload has risen by 19% since then, according to National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins, who tracks workload by number of individual returns filed.
On top of all that remain the stresses of the pandemic, which shuttered workplaces across the country, and made the agency responsible for doling out stimulus payments and monthly child tax credit checks.
Kansas City IRS worker Shawn Gunn previously told Insider that him and his colleagues are doing their best to get everything done, all while contending with the lack of basics like staples, or carts to move papers around on.
"I've spent hundreds of hours with IRS employees," a Treasury official previously told Insider. "They are devoted public servants who want to do their job in the most effective way possible. Today, they simply do not have the resources to do so."
But while the result of other understaffed workplaces may be dining rooms closing, or a longer wait for your food, the IRS's underfunding and understaffing has led to millions of Americans' tax refunds staying unprocessed. That's meant some Americans have been waiting upwards of nine months to get their tax returns — and some previously told Insider that's made it hard to afford groceries, childcare, and even their homes.