The conclusion of the tax filing season Tuesday is about to provide early clues toward resolving a nagging question hanging over the U.S. Treasury: How honest will Americans be about their income when there are suddenly fewer auditors to check them?

The answer has ramifications extending from Treasury debt markets already embroiled in tariff-related turmoil to legislative struggles in Washington over the debt ceiling and a proposed new round of tax cuts. 

A drop in tax collections would likely move forward a debt ceiling deadline from the August to September timeline forecast by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. A sharp falloff also could ratchet up concerns about the fiscal burden of a proposed Republican tax package that matches giant tax cuts with much smaller spending reductions. 

President Donald Trump’s administration this year terminated more than 7,000 Internal Revenue Service employees, mostly involved in tax enforcement, and ultimately may cut the agency’s workforce by 25%.

Analysts have warned that will drive up tax avoidance as well-off taxpayers’ fear of audits eases, though it’s not clear how quickly or how much. 

There are early signs tax collections are holding up this year anyway. Through March, gross U.S. budget receipts for the fiscal year were up 3% to $2.26 trillion, according to the Treasury Department.

“That seems to suggest we may have a robust tax filing season in terms of revenue,” Deputy Treasury Secretary Michael Faulkender said on Bloomberg Television Friday. 

There are lingering doubts raised by IRS filing statistics. As of April 4, the IRS saw a 0.4% reduction in the number of returns received compared to the 2024 season. The dollar value of refunds was up 5%, higher than the inflation rate. 

“A major area of concern is wealthy taxpayers who don’t file when it’s clear that the IRS audit rate is low,” said John Koskinen, a former IRS commissioner. “The non-filers tend to be concentrated in wealthier individuals so they represent more significant revenue loss on an individual basis.”

Jessica Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, said it will probably take longer for receipts to drop because the tax season was already underway when the IRS layoffs began.

“The short-term effects will likely be muted because the tax filing season is nearing an end,” she said. “However, the revenue loss may begin spiking this summer when corporations file their next quarterly taxes, and then rise further by next year’s tax season.” 

Even so, voluntary tax compliance was a high 85% in 2022, according to the IRS. 

“I’m not immediately convinced that there’s going to be some dramatic falloff in compliance right now,” said Pete Sepp, president of the National Taxpayers Union. 

Future years could be very different. The Yale Budget Lab forecast that laying off about 18,000 IRS employees would result in a net revenue loss of roughly $159 billion over ten years. That could rise to as much as $1.6 trillion over 10 years if noncompliance is high, the group said.  

Vanessa Williamson, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said the Trump administration cuts are largely undoing efforts by former President Joe Biden to audit those making more than $1 million per year. She said the IRS could return to its footing in the 2010s when enforcement was lax and audits of those individuals dropped by 70%.

“It could easily become a $100-billion-a-year problem,” she said, noting the IRS high-wealth unit lost 38% of its employees.

A recent change allowing the agency to share taxpayer data with immigration officials could also result in a further loss of $313 billion in the coming decade if that discourages migrants from paying taxes out of fear of deportation, according to the Yale Budget Lab.

Treasury market

Wall Street investors and strategists are closely monitoring the magnitude of this week’s tax collections amid the sharp swings in the bond market driven by the Trump administration’s trade war.

In the near-term, the amount of cash flowing out of the money markets to pay Uncle Sam will impact funding costs. Higher tax receipts for the federal government means more liquidity is drained from the overall financial system, likely pushing up the cost of borrowing in the overnight repurchase market — which was already strained by last week’s market chaos. 

Wells Fargo strategists, who estimate that this April’s tax receipts will boost the Treasury’s General Account by as much as $300 billion, last week flagged the risk of higher repo rates amid the tax payments.

Looking further out, the market is focused on what the April tax receipts mean for the Treasury’s cash balance in light of the debt ceiling. Wrightson ICAP, for one, forecast last month with low conviction an 11% increase in non-withheld income tax collections in the April to May period, compared to last year. 

The amount coming into the Treasury’s coffers also carries implications for the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet unwind, which on April 1 slowed to a cap of $5 billion in Treasuries per month. Officials are closely watching the level of reserves in the banking system and gauging broader financial liquidity to determine how much longer the quantitative tightening process can continue.

Customer service

Businesses have other reasons for concern about the IRS layoffs, including greater difficulty getting advice from the agency on complex tax questions.

“The old adage ‘if you break it, you’ve bought it’ applies here,” Sepp said. “They’re doing the breaking right now, so they own the problem.”

Sepp said the NTU is very concerned about deep coming cuts to the office of the Taxpayer Advocate — an internal means for taxpayers to challenge IRS decisions — and the risk of further delays in efforts to modernize the agency’s creaky data systems.  

It’s unclear, he said, if Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is going to scrap the modernization effort and start over. 

For businesses with complex tax problems, proposals to employ artificial chatbots instead of humans could be especially problematic, said Daniel Reck, a University of Maryland economics professor who researches tax policy. 

“That could turn into a pretty Kafkaesque experience, and it’s already not a lot of fun,” said Reck.

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Busy season is tough, but it has its upside. This is when you’re talking most frequently with your clients, especially those with straightforward, fast-turnaround returns. It’s a great time to leverage these interactions to gather positive feedback from your clients.

If you don’t think clients and prospective clients are checking out your Google reviews, think again. 

Research shows three-quarters (77%) of accounting clients would consider leaving their existing firm if another one was recommended to them. Further, three in five (60%) accounting firm clients conduct online searches as part of their research when vetting potential providers. In fact, two in five accounting clients (38%) who have experienced a service issue with their accounting firm left a negative review on a public website like Yelp or Google. In today’s low-trust digital world, negative reviews have almost two times the impact as positive ones, the researchers concluded.

Can you afford to take that risk?

Fortunately, there’s an easy solution. This is the time of year when you’ll have lots of clients appreciating your work. Why not ask them for a Google review when their experience with you is fresh in their minds. I bring this up because it’s also the time of year when you might be getting some negative Google reviews due to some kind of misunderstanding. Positive reviews will buffer your rating against the negative reviews. Even better, a five-star review is a five-star review. It doesn’t matter if it comes from a simple 1040 client or from a complex client with multiple businesses and a complex family situation. They all carry the same weight.

But you want to make the review, “ask” now, because you’re not likely to be speaking with many clients for the rest of the year. The more time that goes by, the less likely they’ll remember the great work you did. For more about why immediacy is so important, see my recent articles: Don’t succumb to the forgetting curve this tax season and  The power of immediate feedback.

Just because you have a bunch of five-star reviews doesn’t mean you’ll get more business. But it certainly helps lock the back door. If you start racking up negative reviews, clients and prospects notice and will move on. It’s the  same way when I’m referred to a physician or auto-body shop. I immediately look them up, and if their Google stars don’t look good, I’ll look for other options.

How to ask for a Google review

Immediately after filing a client’s tax return, have a staff person reach out and ask: “How was everything? Was there anything we could have done better?” If they say everything went great, then respond: “Thank you. Would you be willing to leave us a Google review? I can show you how to do it in five minutes if you’re not familiar with Google reviews.” 

Some of you may argue that you don’t have enough capacity to have staff spending 10 to 15 minutes with every single satisfied client — especially when they’re already exhausted from the busy season. But I would argue that your firm is not built properly if you can’t devote 10 to 15 minutes of staff time per client to obtain something so valuable to your firm’s success and bottom line. 

How clients of all ages can post Google reviews

Another objection I hear from firm owners all the time is that their clients are older and don’t know how to leave Google reviews and/or they don’t have a Gmail account which is required in order to post Google reviews.

Don’t let that be a roadblock. Here’s a handy three-minute video tutorial you can send to clients about how to leave a Google review without a Gmail account. After sending the video, have your staff person follow up and tell the client: “I’m happy to walk you through it.”

If you send the email to 100 clients who have had good experiences with you and 10% respond, that’s 10 more supportive reviews than you had before. They will likely move your average rating in the right direction. It’s pretty low hanging fruit.

Each review is an opportunity to demonstrate your firm’s value and build trust with potential clients. Don’t leave your online reputation to chance. What is your firm doing to obtain more client reviews? I’d love to hear more. 

President Donald Trump threatened Harvard University’s tax-exempt status after the school said it won’t accept his administration’s demands in exchange for continued federal funding.

“Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting “Sickness?” Trump posted on Truth Social. “Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST!”

The government’s antisemitism task force said late Monday that it would freeze at least $2.2 billion of multiyear grants after Harvard rejected a set of demands from the administration. Earlier in the day, Harvard’s president Alan Garber had argued that the terms crossed red lines regarding academic freedom and interference in higher education.

“It makes clear that the intention is not to work with us to address antisemitism in a cooperative and constructive manner,” Garber wrote on Harvard’s website. “Although some of the demands outlined by the government are aimed at combating antisemitism, the majority represent direct governmental regulation of the ‘intellectual conditions’ at Harvard.”

Harvard, the oldest and richest U.S. college with a $53 billion endowment, has long been a target of Republicans who have accused it of liberal bias and been critical of its hiring and admissions policies. But it has become a flashpoint for the White House after campuses were roiled by pro-Palestinian student protests after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas on Israel and the Jewish state’s retaliatory response in Gaza. 

Harvard had previously said it would work with the administration to fight antisemitism on campus, such as tightening disciplinary procedures, but Garber said the administration expanded its terms to include the ending of diversity, equity and inclusion programs, changes to its admissions and hiring and curbs on the “power” of certain students, faculty and administrators because of their ideological views. 

Harvard’s tax-exempt status affords the school a variety of benefits, such as not having to pay traditional property taxes on educational buildings. It can sell bonds that pay interest that’s exempt from federal taxes, which lures investors and helps lower borrowing costs. A Bloomberg News analysis estimated that Harvard’s tax benefits totaled at least $465 million in 2023.

The Internal Revenue Service, which is supposed to enforce federal tax laws independent of partisan pressure, determines whether a nonprofit loses the status. Organizations can lose their status, though, if they’re involved in political campaign activity or are heavily involved in lobbying. Groups can also lose their designation if they have excessive income unrelated to their core mission or fail to file annual returns with the IRS.