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"IRS agents shouldn't work from home" was the headline of an opinion article written by U.S. Rep. Ron Estes and published in the Wall Street Journal.
Estes, a Kansas Republican, hit the proverbial nail on the head when he wrote, "Some might argue that teleworking, with reduced overhead, offers a tax-saving benefit, but that's realized only if the agency is providing adequate customer service. The IRS isn't."
Anyone who doubts the accuracy or honesty of Estes' statement needs only to talk with some of the taxpayers who have been waiting in excess of two years for amended returns to be processed.
Many of those people consider the IRS' performance to be abysmal and incompetent.
When such taxpayers learn that, perhaps, more than 50% of IRS tax-return processors still are working from home, no wonder they suspect that the amount of out-of-office work time is contributing to the amended-returns fiasco.
The IRS needs to face that there are many more distractions to employees working at home than there would be in a workplace setting. There appears to be little if any urgency to fix this issue.
This is unacceptable. Get workers back in the office -- or hold them accountable for failing to get returns amended two years ago processed.