IRS will stay fully staffed for first five 5 days of shutdown

The IRS will stay fully staffed for the first five working days of a possible Saturday shutdown, a lapsed appropriations contingency plan posted late Friday shows — temporarily easing concerns that the IRS would furlough employees during tax filing season.

The IRS will use money from the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, P.L. 117-169, to remain fully staffed from Saturday through Feb. 7, the plan said. The plan also includes totals of staff who are designated as exempt and would be retained in case of a lapse shutdown.

The plan was posted as Senate Democrats, Republicans, and the White House agreed to pass five spending bills to fund a large portion of the government, including the IRS, for the remainder of the fiscal year, The New York Times and other media outlets reported. The agreement includes a measure to fund the Department of Homeland Security for two weeks, the outlets reported.

It wasn’t clear when the House would act after the Senate passes the funding bill, so the shutdown, with a deadline of midnight Friday, could still happen.

The IRS took the same approach in the previous government shutdown, which began Oct. 1 and ended Nov. 12, when it kept its full staff working for the first five days. After that, the IRS furloughed almost half its workforce and closed most operations.

In a letter Thursday, the AICPA had warned that a government shutdown that forces the IRS to furlough employees would seriously disrupt the 2026 filing season and harm taxpayers.

“The consequences of furloughing IRS employees, reducing taxpayer and practitioner services, and introducing the prospect for prolonged or widespread technology disruptions could prove to be detrimental to the success of the filing season currently underway and the effective and timely implementation of recent legislative changes,” the AICPA said in the letter, sent to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who also serves as acting IRS commissioner, and IRS CEO Frank Bisignano.

Although the IRS shut down once previously during the April filing season, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has never experienced a lapse in appropriations in April, the AICPA said. In addition to the pandemic closure, a government shutdown occurred in 2019, ending just before the start of tax season, the letter said. Full staffing during any shutdown “is critical not only for a successful filing season but for a filing season that does not create additional tax administrative problems, harm taxpayers, condense practitioner workload, and further engross the IRS in backlogs for years to come,” the letter said.

AICPA RESOURCE

Navigating the Government Shutdown

— To comment on this article or to suggest an idea for another article, contact Martha Waggoner at Martha.Waggoner@aicpa-cima.com.