The Department of Government Efficiency just showed us exactly how bureaucracy slows down the IRS.
Someone at DOGE noticed that the IRS website login button was buried in the middle of the page instead of in the top-right corner where everyone expects it.
An IRS engineer said the soonest this basic fix could happen through normal channels was July 1st, 103 days away. But when DOGE stepped in to delete the red tape, the same engineer fixed it in just 71 minutes.
The IRS receives $14-15 billion yearly and employs tens of thousands of people, so it isn't short on resources. But for decades, it has failed to modernize its systems.
And DOGE is just getting started. They're planning a 30-day hackathon to create a "mega API" for IRS data. They'll mirror taxpayer data to a cloud platform so other parts of the agency can actually use it. One skeptical IRS employee called this timeline "not technically possible" and claimed it would "cripple the IRS."
Why does this matter? When I interviewed former IRS agent Jeff Johnston, he told me how outdated their systems are. Agents still use green screens and have to print tax returns in PDF format. They can't export data to Excel or properly view it on screen.
This technology gap creates real-world problems:
Auditors complete only a fraction of the work they could otherwise
Customer service remains phone-based
Simple tasks take months instead of minutes
Moving to cloud-based systems would transform everything. IRS engineers could build better tools faster. Support systems could access live data. AI could help flag issues. And tax pros could finally get usable self-service portals instead of waiting on hold.
The fact that people have to call the IRS for so much tells you everything. This 71-minute fix is just the beginning of what's possible when you strip away bureaucracy.
Want to hear all the details about DOGE's plan for the IRS and what it means for taxpayers? Watch Episode 431 of The Accounting Podcast.
