That means, the report continues, the “IRS will face mounting challenges in continuing to rely on a system that has software written in an archaic language.”

GAO deemed 33 % of IRS purposes, 23 % of software program and eight % of {hardware} as “outdated but still critical to day-to-day operations.” This consists of purposes 25 to 64 years previous and software program as much as 15 variations behind. “These legacy assets will continue to contribute to security risks, unmet mission needs, staffing issues, and increased costs,” GAO declared.

“A private company with tens of millions of customers would go belly up if their information technology was older than the CEO’s parents,” mentioned Tony Reardon, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents IRS workers. “Yet that is what the IRS deals with every day.”

The use of out of date methods, he added, “most certainly discourages people trained in cutting-edge computer technology from pursuing a career at the IRS.”

Aggravating this old-age drama is the tax company’s latest suspension of six modernization initiatives, which the GAO mentioned consists of operations “essential to replacing the 60-year-old Individual Master File (IMF),” described as “the authoritative data source” for particular person tax accounts. IRS had been attempting to interchange the grasp file for greater than a decade, however then determined to reassign workers to different work.

“As a result, the schedule for these initiatives is now undetermined,” GAO mentioned. The goal completion date, introduced final yr as 2030, “is now unknown. This will lead to mounting challenges in continuing to rely on a critical system with software written in an archaic language requiring specialized skills.”

All this makes bother for taxpayers, who paid $4.1 trillion in taxes and had been refunded $1.1 trillion in fiscal 2021.

The IRS’s “Where’s My Refund” software is in excessive demand, however on a GAO podcast accompanying the report, David B. Hinchman, the watchdog’s director of IT & cybersecurity, mentioned this system “isn’t capable of accessing detailed information on an individual’s tax return status,” leaving many disillusioned. Compounding the issue, Hinchman mentioned taxpayers then name IRS’s toll-free numbers, “which due to IRS staffing shortages might, at best, have insanely long waits to talk to someone, at worst might actually go unanswered.”

Money for modernization apparently isn’t the issue. IRS reported spending nearly $7 billion on IT in fiscal 2021 and 2022 mixed, in keeping with GAO. Nearly $80 billion for the IRS within the Inflation Reduction Act, authorised in August, included nearly $4.8 billion for enterprise methods modernization and greater than $25.3 billion for operations help, which incorporates working and sustaining its IT methods.

The IRS has lengthy been a Republican goal and final month, in one of many first actions after the celebration received management of the House, it voted to rescind the $80 billion increase, on a straight party-line vote. A House Ways and Means Committee statement claimed Democrats had “supercharged” the IRS and “have long used the IRS and the tax code as a political weapon.” A committee staffer mentioned the rescission wouldn’t hit enterprise methods modernization and taxpayer companies. The House invoice has little probability of passing the Senate.

Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.), who requested the GAO report, complained that Republicans beforehand had been “starving the agency,” leaving it “understaffed and under-resourced,” including “the IRS does not even have its arms around its legacy IT problem.”

Yet, the IRS had 21 IT modernization initiatives in August 2022, GAO reported, however greater than 1 / 4 of them didn’t have time frames for addressing antiquated methods. Without that, “IRS lacks accountability for completing this key element,” GAO mentioned.

“At the end of the day, IRS relies extensively on information technology to perform mission-critical functions,” Hinchman mentioned. “IT is literally the vehicle on which our taxes are processed. However, this vital technology relies on the heavy use of outdated and expensive legacy systems.”

Those historic methods are a important purpose “taxpayer service has been awful the last few years,” mentioned Erin M. Collins, the IRS’s nationwide taxpayer advocate. “Historically, the IRS has been light-years behind private financial institutions in its technology and service.” Millions of paper tax returns “are still keystroked digit by digit into IRS systems,” she mentioned, as a result of the company doesn’t scan the paperwork.

But even starting this tax season with a backlog hundreds of thousands of returns lengthy, Collins mentioned the IRS, having lately employed 5,000 extra customer support representatives, is “in a better position” now than that earlier two years.

IRS’s response included within the report acknowledged the GAO audit “is a generally accurate description of the agency’s operating environment” and agreed with the watchdog’s 9 suggestions, together with setting time frames to finish modernization plans. IRS mentioned it acknowledges sustaining previous methods “contributes to the rising costs of operations and maintenance; this trajectory remains a significant risk …”

“We have taken a series of actions to address these important issues,” IRS continued, however added that even the antiquated methods “that use older programming languages, remain secure and stable.”

Fully addressing these points can’t occur shortly sufficient for Connolly.

“We all know that customer experience should be a top priority for an agency with a nearly ubiquitous public footprint,” he mentioned. “Our tax system is complicated enough. IRS IT should be solving, not contributing to, the problem.”