With tax season upon us, the IRS has a significant amount of essential personnel it needs to keep on duty, but more than 50% of the agency’s employees are being furloughed during the shutdown. If it were any other time of the year, that percentage would be even higher. The IRS begins accepting 2017 tax returns on January 29, but questions may go unanswered, and help from agency employees will be hard to come by as Americans try to figure out this new tax system on their own during the shutdown.
Excerpt: Caroline Kenny, CNN