As we went to press, the profession was just wrapping up yet another tax season - this one significantly calmer than some in recent years, though not without excitement. The Affordable Care Act provided significant challenges, as did reports that a surprisingly large number of clients had had their identities stolen, but by far the biggest story of this tax season was the serious resource constraints at the Internal Revenue Service - an issue so big that it got its own long-form investigation on John Oliver's Last Week Tonight. When the IRS wasn't busy accepting returns, it was warning tax preparers and taxpayers alike about long waits on telephone help lines, and running out of tax forms at its offices across the country - and it availed itself of every opportunity to remind anyone who would listen that its budget has been cut by a total of $1.2 billion since 2011, and that it has lost more than 18,000 employees over the same period.
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