In the Black: March 2025

IRS Updates: Layoffs and what DOGE is up to.

The IRS has laid off 6,700 people at the end of February right at the height of tax season. Most of those fired (5,000) were folks working in compliance, who had been hired in the last few years to focus on collecting underpaid taxes from corporations and wealthy individuals. The IRS estimates that over $600 billion in taxes goes uncollected every year.

The firing isn't expected to make a big impact on wait and processing time for the rest of us but the real winners here are big business and the rich. The compliance department that exists untouched will continue to focus on low and median income Americans and small businesses- which are easier to audit. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face.

In other deeply stupid news, Elon Musk’s DOGE tried to access the IRS database containing all US taxpayers personal information and tax data. For context , this data is so sensitive that not even the IRS commissioner has direct access. After a few days of wondering whether I should advise clients to lock their credit and file extensions, I was relieved to hear that the Office of Personal Management deemed this beyond their scope and will only allow the 25 year old DOGE engineer to access anonymized data.

BOIR: Will they or won’t they?

About this time last year, I was letting everyone know about a new filing that my LLC, Partnership and SCorp clients had to file: the BOIR. The BOIR stands for Beneficial Ownership Information Report. This is a new filing reporting to the feds showing who owns your business with the idea that it would allow them to more easily track money laundering and tax fraud (see above).

In case of will they or won’t they: a Texas court last January issued a nationwide injunction prohibiting the enforcement of (BOI) reporting rules. THEN last month, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas lifted the injunction on February 18, 2025. So as it stands the deadline for filing BOI reports was extended to March 21, 2025 for folks filing their initial or updated report. Not sure if you are compliant? We are helping folks track this and file - so ask us on your tax review call!