Taxpayers aren’t usually inclined to sympathize with the Internal Revenue Service, but this year they probably should. Thanks to a brutal combination of staff shortages and new complications in the tax code, the filing season now underway has put extraordinary strain on the agency.

The Biden administration aimed to modernize the IRS and increase its staffing, correctly calculating that better tax enforcement would pay for itself many times over.

Soon after the plan was announced, Congress began rolling back the necessary funding — a shift that has since accelerated. In 2025, changes driven by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency cut IRS staffing by more than 25%. By January, the agency had been led by seven different commissioners in the space of 12 months.

Then last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act added layers of complexity to a system already bordering on the unintelligible. The new law extended earlier tax cuts about to expire and added new ones (some of them once again “temporary”).

Together with weaker enforcement, the changes will deny the government revenue it urgently requires to get borrowing under control. At the same time, many lower-income taxpayers will struggle to understand and comply with the rules. No doubt, they’ll be pleased to get bigger refunds for 2025 — but there’ll also be more delays, mistakes and frustration than usual.

Much of the confusion arises from maneuvers to pad this year’s refunds, conveniently timed to influence November’s elections. (For many taxpayers, OBBBA cut taxes retroactively for 2025, but withholding continued as before, resulting in bigger refund checks this spring.)

New deductions for mortgage interest, seniors, tipped income, overtime pay and car-loan interest payments serve no clear economic purpose but do undermine what was best about the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act — namely, simplifying the system by encouraging more taxpayers to claim a bigger standard deduction instead of itemizing. The expanded mortgage deduction will lead many taxpayers to switch back to itemizing. Most of the other new deductions are “above the line,” meaning they can be claimed in addition to the standard deduction; each comes with its own complications.

For instance, to see whether your car-loan payment (of up to $10,000) fully qualifies, just check that your modified adjusted gross income is no more than $100,000 for single filers ($200,000 for joint filers), above which your deduction phases out by $200 per $1,000 of excess income; that the car is new, not leased, for personal use, and weighs less than 14,000 pounds; and that the loan was initiated after Dec. 31, 2024.

Then feed your vehicle identification number into the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s VIN decoder to confirm plant of manufacture and final assembly in the U.S.; report loan interest paid as per your Form 1098 (which lenders provide; if you don’t have a Form 1098, contact your lender). Now complete the eight steps of Part IV (“Additional Deductions”) of Schedule 1-A of your tax return and you’re good to go.

The deductions for tips and overtime might be less straightforward.

Sound tax policy requires simple rules administered by an adequately resourced agency. The U.S. has a code that’s a parody of complexity and, for the time being, an IRS that’s acutely understaffed. Bad as things are, there’s always a way to make them worse.

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