Treasury Adviser Sounds Alarm About IRS ’30 Years Behind Schedule And $15 Billion Over Budget’

U.S. Treasury Special Adviser Sam Corcos said Thursday on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle” that the IRS is not only 30 years behind schedule but also $15 billion over budget.

In February, calls to make cuts to the IRS circulated just prior to Feb. 20, when reports said the agency had begun laying off between 120 and 150 employees from its Denver office. On “The Ingraham Angle,” Corcos joined U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Host Laura Ingraham asked Corcos what led him to the position and what his top goal is.

“I’ve been brought in to look at the IRS’ modernization program in particular, as well as the operations and maintenance budget,” Corcos said. “I really care a lot about this country. This is a huge program that’s currently 30 years behind schedule, and it’s already $15 billion over budget.”

“Wait, wait, wait a second,” Ingraham said. “Explain to our viewers what the program is in layman’s terms.”

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In 2021, former President Joe Biden’s administration proposed adding 87,000 employees to the IRS over 10 years to crack down on tax cheats, according to Politico. Additionally, the administration sought to increase the IRS’ budget by $80 billion, but the proposal would have likely failed in Congress if Biden had attempted to get approval.

Corcos went on to detail the IRS’ infrastructure, saying that his challenge is to figure out how to migrate the current system into a more modern one.

“The IRS has some pretty legacy infrastructure,” Corcos said. “It’s actually very similar to what banks have been using. It’s old mainframes running COBOL and assembly. The challenge has been, how do we migrate that to a modern system? Virtually every bank has already done this, but we’re still using a lot of those same systems.”

“Typically, in industry, this takes a few years, maybe a few hundred million dollars. We’re now 35 years into this program,” Corcos said. “We’ve actually been, if you ask them now, it’s five years away, and it’s been five years away since 1990. It was supposed to be delivered in 1996, and it’s still five years away.”

The Trump administration reportedly plans to cut over 20% of the IRS staff at the Taxpayer Advocate Service (TAS), according to The Washington Post. Of TAS’ current 1,900 employees, an estimated 430 are expected to be cut in the initial phase, with over 90 employees either taking deferred resignation offers or already laid off this year, the outlet reported.