Feb. 2, 2015 The Administration's 2016 budget request provides an important path forward to restoring taxpayer services, improving tax enforcement and providing critical needs for the nation's tax system. The budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2016 is for $12.9 billion, which is nearly $2 billion above the level for the current 2015 Fiscal Year. The funding also would counter five years of declining budgets for the IRS, which have deeply eroded our ability to provide critical services for taxpayers, offer appropriate tax enforcement protections and plan for future improvements. For example, the 2016 budget calls for adding nearly 3,000 employees to help answer taxpayer questions on our phone lines, which would allow us to answer 80 percent of incoming calls compared to the current projection of 50 percent for this filing season. Besides adding important taxpayer services, the budget would also help our efforts to combat identity theft and refund fraud. And we would be able to take important steps to restore enforcement efforts, expanding our efforts to pursue criminals as well as adding audit and collection resources. The additional enforcement funding would more than pay for itself, with billions of dollars being collected. For every dollar invested in these programs, there can be returns ranging from 6-to-1 and even up to 20-to-1 in some initiatives. More details are available in the 2016 Budget-in-Brief PDF. IRS Budgets Recent IRS budget levels since 2010 : FY 2010 $12.15 billion FY 2011 $12.12 billion FY 2012 $11.82 billion FY 2013 $11.20 billion FY 2014 $11.29 billion FY 2015 $10.9 billion
