Summary
IRS employees who accepted the Trump administration’s buyout offer have been told they must continue working until May 15 because their roles are deemed “essential.”
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) had offered voluntary resignations and warned of future downsizing for those who stayed.
Uncertainty now surrounds the offer’s implementation, sparking frustration among employees.
The National Treasury Employees Union criticized the move, arguing it proves IRS workers are vital, especially during tax season, and that federal job cuts risk harming public services.
Good time to remind people to file your tax returns as soon as possible if you’re expecting a refund, and delay your return as long as humanly possible with extensions if you’re expecting a bill.
I was just thinking about this myself. These fuck sticks are going to break everything, and I have probably $10k coming back to me. I’m also thinking about changing my deductions on my paycheck so I’m not overpaying next year. I do it as a sort of forced savings account which I know is a bad idea in that it’s giving the government a free loan essentially, but I also know I’m not a saver, so I do it to get a nice windfall every April. I don’t trust this government to hold my money for a year.
Definitely change your deductions ASAP. Never loan the government free money, because you could be earning your own interest on that money and coming out ahead.
Consider setting up a savings account at your bank or credit union that allows automatic scheduled transfers. Set up a transfer that’s scheduled for every paycheck date that is a couple hundred dollars so you don’t even have to think about it. Then every 6mo or so, take what you have in that savings account and put it into a CD so it earns real interest and not the .05% crap most savings accounts provide. That’s the bare minimum.
The cents of interest is not worth losing access to a non-accessible savings account.
Your advice is great for someone with lots of disposable income, not great for those living pay check to pay check.
What’s the difference between a time locked CD and paying excessive tax withholding to the government that you don’t get back until the following year? Its not available either way.
I only ever buy CD’s 6 to 12mo at a time, you arent required to buy some long term 36 or 48mo CD.
The point I am making is that OP apparently has that extra income but is not utilizing it right. He’s loaning it to the government for free if he gets a 10k tax refund yearly, that’s actual insanity. No properly set tax withholding should ever have a refund more than $500-1k.
Hell, 10k in a 12mo CD right now is an extra $450 in your pocket yearly. Rather than loaning it to the government for free, you can make some side cash with it. Plus he can fine tune his savings rate to be more comfortable for the rest of the year rather than waiting for that refund check to breathe easy.
I have a good chunk of money getting 4% APY right now. I just mainly do the overpayment on my paycheck so I get a big payday in April. I know my money is better off there, I just like having money set aside that I cannot touch. In theory I can just set a direct deposit to an account and just not log in and throw away the debit card, which is probably what I’ll do, but I’d rather this not be forced upon me by having absolute morons raiding our government’s coffers to worry about.
“Non-accessible savings account”? What kind of savings account are you using?
I think they were specifically referring to “CD” account, which generally speaking pays more interest than a standard savings account but requires a commitment where you cannot access the funds for a fixed amount of time 6 months, 12 months, etc)
Ahh
Just to add full context, if you owe money and fill an extension till October you could have to pay a 25% penalty on what you owe.
https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-reminds-taxpayers-an-extension-to-file-is-not-an-extension-to-pay-taxes