IRS hopes to replace fired enforcement workers with AI

Following considerable cuts to its enforcement workforce, the US's Internal Revenue Service (IRS) plans to use AI to supplement its ability to collect taxes from US citizens.  News of the IRS's plan came from US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent during a House Appropriations Committee hearing Tuesday to discuss the Treasury's …

[Wang Cores]

Post #3 of Wangcore's Corollary

The people who push AI are the best candidates for their roles being replaced by AI, not the people it being foisted on.

[Citizen of Nowhere]

Re: Post #3 of Wangcore's Corollary

I don't think an AI would accept the job of replacing Scott Bessent. Firstly, it would be ashamed to replace someone that fucking dumb; and secondly, it would probably object to licking Trump's arsehole all the time. If only ... If only AI was *actually* intelligent. It's as dumb as the President of the US. If only anyone in the Trump cabinet displayed even a *modicum* of intelligence. It is sort of amusing though to watch the US President drawling with all the articulacy of a totally drunk chimpanzee while calling highly qualified young black women "low IQ".

[Anonymous Coward]

Oooooooh. Someone pass the popcorn.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? Nothing to see here. We already know that the AI will be provided by Xitler, and also know that it won't be pursuing convicted fat orange tax dodgers, nor their billionaire mates.

[cyberdemon]

Why risk in-person corruption when you can outsource it to an inscrutable black-box bullshit generator?

No doubt, the model will pick out the elderly and vulnerable for enforcement actions, while anyone with $1bn+ will be mysteriously glossed over

[HuBo]

Definitely! I mean, AI is superb for this, modern, efficient, relentless, follows orders, doesn't complain, just what's needed for tax harassment of folks who fail asscrack-caliper comptrol (Krebs, Harvard presidents, trans woke migrants, ...). It's so great, it's the greatestest!

Let it not be said that the Orange Incubus 34-count (and counting) Convicted Felon in Cheese is retributionally old-fashioned. Not a word!

Really, what better way to stealthily decide who can dodge taxes (17 counts), evade IRS scrutiny, and defraud US taxpayers, than through an inscrutable Orange(is the new black)-box replacement for humans who may not always be loyally docile? Panama better get the memo on this one (or else!)!

When we're done with IRS (big thanks to fave chihuahua Bessent, or is it Basset?) we'll take a good hard look at judges and banks ... (and independent News media ...) ... bet our DOGE brownshirt wankers' loyal AI can do wonders there too, and at Fort Knox!

[HuBo]

Oh, and while on this topic, if you allow me, I'd like to also remind everyone here of our massively fraud-infested elections and voting machines that just can't rightly place His Magnificence, the Glowing Offal Orange in Fake Spray-On Cheese, as uncontested #winner of all elections, at all times, without the watchful vigilance and helping hands of our BFF Vladimir Rectum Putin, such inimitable patriotic loyalists as fellow felon Tina Peters, and a bunch of cheerful weirdos seeking to innocently tour the US Capitol, with just a little joyful pillage and murder here and there along the way.

What's a guy supposed to do, huh? Pay hush money to porn stars? Pressure Georgia's Secretary of State for extra votes? Coerce Ukraine to investigate a political rival? What?!

Anyways, short of more governmental autotomy, this time to get rid of elections altogether, maybe this newfangled Orange-box AI can also just guarantee us the very accurate voting results we want. I'm sure some brilliant computational eugenists will happily help with that too (Thiel, Musk, ...) ... One can only hope! _(arrrgh!)

[LucreLout]

"xitler". Lol. First time I've seen it. Amusing.

[vtcodger]

Clippy gets a job

I am pleased and happy that Clippy has finally found gainful employment. He's 30 years old for heavens sake. About time he quit hanging out in his room playing video games and harassing folks via social media. Of course there is the possibility that this is the wrong job for him.

Time will tell.

[MrAptronym]

This isn't an AI story.

The AI part is BS. They fired IRS enforcement agents because they don't want to be doing audits and collections. That's it. Saying "Oh, we'll do collections because 'AI Boom'!" is just a lie you say when being questioned by the senate, because you cannot say the truth. AI is just a smokescreen here, I guess they may payout some AI contract (Perhaps to xAI?), but they have no intent of actually replacing agents with an AI. The complete lack of even the most basic details should make that clear.

The point of this push for 'Government Efficiency' is not to push for government efficiency. Treating it like that is missing the point. We are engaging with grifters and conmen on their own terms, which is a crazy thing to do. They are doing this to strip down the govt for parts. They will loot what they can and leave an ineffective husk where you have privatized any function you can make a profit off of and rendered all of the regulatory agencies completely incapable of fighting you in the future.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: This isn't an AI story.

>They fired IRS enforcement agents because they don't want to be doing audits and collections

They do, just not on the 'wrong' people.

They already got smacked wrist for a policy where they target people at 30-50% median income. On the grounds that anyone poorer is probably owed a refund and anyone richer can afford accountants. So this is the sweet spot for those will pay up following a threatening letter for some random amount. Doing this with AI is, as they say, a no-brainer

[Eclectic Man]

Re: This isn't an AI story.

AI only replaces actual people when it does their jobs as well or better than they did. This is wishful thinking at best, and at worst it is crippling the US tax gathering capabilities.

Did Bessent say how long it will take for this AI to start delivering? Of course not, because he doesn't know and has not let contracts before firing staff.

[Anonymous Coward]

Good luck

Running AI on a TRS-80.

[JWLong]

Re: Good luck

"Good luck

Running AI on a TRS-80."

Come on man, I had a Model 2 in................

Shit, that was 1983................

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Good luck

It was more doable on the Model II (and it's successors) if you could the mortgage on a 512KB RAM expansion :-)

(The II was the original of the 12, 16 etc line, very much business oriented with 8" drives etc and incompatible with the original TRS-80 line that went on with the III, 4, 4p etc - proving that not only MS can confuse the market with naming conventions such as Windows/WindowsRT that sound the same but are very, very different!)

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Good luck

I remember "playing" Eliza on the TRS-80 :-)

I hope she's improved a bit over the years...

[Number6]

Given my experience of the accuracy of AI to date, I don't expect this to go well.

[PCScreenOnly]

With luck

It may go after the orange one and his friends as it hallucinated

[kmorwath]

Fire employees...

... fil the coffers of "some" companies so rich executives can increase their bonuses and shareholders order new expensive champagne, regardless of the tariffs...

[Tron]

AI is not taking anyone's job.

The job won't now be done to any viable standard, so it has effectively been erased. The deployment of AI hands some cash to GAFA and whitewashes the failure of sacking competent, experienced people who made more cash for the USG than they cost, in a moronic act of ideological showboating. As we found out with Boris and Liz, elect a clown, live in a circus.

[DS999]

Tax collections are going to plummet

Biden had pushed through increased funding for the IRS, which they demonstrated is being repaid 6 to 1 in increased enforcement of EXISTING tax law. That is, collecting more taxes without changing any laws just by getting people who owe taxes to pay them.

Even then they estimated there were hundreds of billions in uncollected taxes from fraud and some people outright not filing at all. When the IRS has been gutted, morons are in charge, and AI is supposed to be the police the number of people taking deductions they know they aren't entitled to or simply deciding not to file and dare the IRS to catch them is going to increase.

That's what happens when the administration consists of more than twice as many billionaires as all other administrations combined. What do billionaires want more than lower tax rates? Less ability for the IRS to discover how many income they are hiding or deductions/credits they aren't legally permitted to take.

Trump is going to cut taxes for the only people who cares about even if congress deadlocks and can't pass an extension to his 2017 tax cuts. That would mean you and I pay more, while billionaires pay less. That's what MAGA voters are getting.

[PCScreenOnly]

Re: Tax collections are going to plummet

Maga voters are thick. Can't see that nor the taxiffs week affect them badly

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Tax collections are going to plummet

It will be a productive as those DRM bollocks letters saying you have accessed copyright material….

[Kev99]

So that's where all the congress who are going to get sacked in 2026 are going work. Gives a whole new meaning to artificial intelligence.

[JWLong]

Whole New Meaning

"Gives a whole new meaning to artificial intelligence."

AI=Ain't Intelligent.

[Philo T Farnsworth]

Algorithm

for taxpayer in taxypayers:

if taxpayer["class"] is "billionaire":

continue

else:

audit( taxpayer )

(Sorry for the bad formatting, El Reg's HTML doesn't seem to allow indents).

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Algorithm

El Reg's HTML doesn't seem to allow indents

There must be some way of sneaking them in as I noticed some indented code in a comment recently. Couldn't determine how it was done - I imagine some unicode/UTF8 character that El Reg's Perl RE code doesn't grok as white space.

The down vote must have a Python phobic Perl coder (you don't need indents to code in Perl just borderline sanity.)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: you don't need indents to code in Perl just borderline sanity.

Hey now! I'll have you know sanity vanished over the horizon in my rear view mirror ages ago!

- Perl coder

[Philo T Farnsworth]

Re: Algorithm

The whole notion of semantic white space put me off of using Python for years, believe me. It's far too easy to bork a loop or an if statement by inadvertently hitting tab on the wrong line.

I assume there's a rationale for the choice but I've never seen a convincing one.

Admittedly, I'm not a language designer and I only play a computer scientist on radio, so if someone is prepared to educate me, I'm ready to listen.

As for borderline sanity in Perl, eye of the beholder, friend, eye of the beholder.

[johnrobyclayton]

Opportunity

ChatGPT user: How do I convince the new IRS AI to reduce my taxes?

ChatGPt: I can certainly help with that.

Score!!!

[deadlockvictim]

Senior executives

Once AI starts replacing senior executives, then I'll accept that AI is more than a tool for senior management to cut the workforce.

[Zippy´s Sausage Factory]

This is going to be fun in court when the AI hallucinates a mythical billion dollars in a bank that doesn't exist. I don't expect many judges would be pleased with that.

[spuck]

If you're trying to improve the bottom line of a company, the one place I would think I wouldn't cut would be the accounts receivable people... you know: the ones who collect the money owed to the company.

[bill 27]

Wonder what companies AI

is going to be trained on all that IRS historical/current taxpayer data.

[John Geek]

chickens or eggs first ?

shouldn't you develop the Artificial Ignorance replacement system FIRST, *then* lay off the staff it replaces??

[reubot]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robodebt_scheme anyone?