An IRS worker in Kansas City is trying to make sure you get your tax refund — if he can find any staples: 'We're real people just like you'

• An understaffed and underfunded IRS is currently dealing with a backlog of unprocessed tax returns.
• Shawn Gunn is one of the tax examiners working hard to get taxpayers their refunds.

Shawn Gunn is trying his best to make sure you get your tax refund.

The 30-year-old works as a tax examiner at an IRS facility in Kansas City, Missouri. He's been there for just under a year, and his job involves fixing little errors people make along the way while filing their taxes — like using a nickname instead of their legal name.

"Holistically, the theme is chaos," Gunn said.

Gunn is one of more than 75,000 IRS workers nationwide experiencing the firsthand strains of an understaffed and underfunded federal agency. His workday struggles mean some Americans waiting months, and sometimes years, to resolve their taxes.

For Gunn, that looks like working on outdated computers, scrambling to find basic supplies like staples, and navigating hallways chock full of papers.

"We need tons and tons of help," Gunn said of the colleagues he calls "people just like you." "They're doing the best they can."

The IRS has a historic backlog of tax returns. At the end of December 2021, the IRS still had 6 million unprocessed original tax returns from years past, according to national taxpayer advocate Erin Collins.

It's something that's "frustrating" the IRS, according to Commissioner Chuck Rettig, who has repeatedly implored Congress for more funding. His agency's budget has shrunk by more than 20% in the last decade, according to the Tax Policy Center. And its workload — which Collins measures in number of returns — has grown by 19% since 2010. That's falling on a workforce that's shrunk by 17%.

'Paper is the IRS's Kryptonite, and the agency is still buried in it'

At the end of 2020, the IRS had five million pieces of unanswered taxpayer correspondence, according to Collins, the IRS watchdog.

"Paper is the IRS's Kryptonite, and the agency is still buried in it," Collins wrote in her annual report.

Gunn has experienced that firsthand. "When I first got there, it was insane," Gunn said.

Picture a stereotypical office full of cubicles — and then "imagine that filled with like hundreds of carts just everywhere," he said, referring to the three-and-a-half foot tall white carts that hold stacks of papers.

The agency was always running out of those carts, Gunn said. "At one point, we'd literally have a bunch of tax forms that we could sort, but we didn't have carts to put 'em on. So they just sat."

"All the hallways, all of the walkways were just full of paper," Gunn said. "You've got enough room to get to your desk, but that's it."

There's also boxes and boxes full of paper through the aisles of warehouses, according to a Treasury official. Without carts, workers sometimes move aside multiple boxes to get to the one that contains the return they're looking for.

And it's not getting better anytime soon. In written Congressional testimony, Rettig said that updates to IRS IT systems have been delayed — "which means the IRS and taxpayers must continue to use certain paper-based processes."

"In 2022, IRS employees should not be transcribing paper returns by hand," Rettig said.

All of that paper "can result in significant delays."

"We are in this position because we have not had the sustained sufficient multi-year investment for IT modernization necessary to improve our technology and operating systems," Rettig said.

"It's remarkable that the IRS is able to do as well as it does in an office structure that is decades out of date," a US Treasury official said when asked for comment.

The IRS, in lieu of comment, directed Insider to an online resource about careers at the agency.

Piles of paper but no staples to hold them

If there was an abundance of paper at the IRS, there was a scarcity of staples. "I used to spend so much of my time finding staples," Gunn said.

Then there are the computers. The IRS is still using technology for processing returns that goes back to the 1960's. Gunn said that the systems are "just old;" the computers are reminiscent of the movie "Hackers"— down to the dark green screen with white text. Some computers are so old that it can take up to 30 minutes just to log in, according to the Treasury official.

Buried within the piles of papers are millions of unprocessed returns. Some taxpayers previously told Insider that they're waiting on returns for loved ones who have passed away, holding up the process of both emotional and financial closure.

Vince Ashcraft's mother died in 2019. He's been waiting on her final tax return since March 2020.

"This really needs to just end," he previously told Insider. "That's the biggest frustration of all. It's not about the money. It's about the inability to have closure with my mom's death."

'We're people just like you'

For some, not receiving tax returns is the difference between affording childcare, groceries, and even their homes. Rettig, the agency's chief, has said that the IRS will get through its backlog by December. Gunn wishes that services were better for them.

"I personally am doing the best I can to make that happen," he said. "I know a lot of the people with me are doing the best they can to make that happen. We're people just like you. We want to make sure we live in a good country with an easy-to-follow tax system. We're in this all together."

"I've spent hundreds of hours with IRS employees," the Treasury official said. "They are devoted public servants who want to do their job in the most effective way possible. Today, they simply do not have the resources to do so."

In Kansas City, workers from different departments help each other out by serving rotations in the mail room — part of the agency's current all hands on deck approach. A machine slits open the bottom of an envelope, and someone has to manually take out what's inside to check for payments, and ensure it's stamped and stapled correctly so they can send it off to the correct department for processing — that is, if they can find any staples.