The IRS' Plan to Collect Taxes After Doomsday - YouTube

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Benjamin Franklin once famously said that only two things are certain: death and taxes.

But, then again, Benjamin Franklin also said stupid stuff like “a true friend is the

best possession” even though we all know the best possession is a Nintendo Wii, and

that “admiration is the daughter of ignorance” when everyone know the daughter of Ignorance

is named Stephanie and she’s a sophomore at Cornell.

But it turns out that on the whole death and taxes thing, Franklin had a point.

In the United States, tax collection is run by the IRS, or International Roomba Society,

a group of pencil-pushing, calculator-toting, robotic-vacuum-cleaner-loving nerds who are

dead set on taking all of your money and giving it to the government to spend on ridiculous

nonsense like public education, roads, and healthcare.

Apart from one bigly exception, the IRS is pretty darn good at their job, so if you’re

looking to get Uncle Sam’s greedy fingers out of your wallet, you might think your best

bet is some sort of nationwide catastrophe: a nuclear war, or a natural disaster, or a

global pandemic that the everyone basically ignores because people really want to eat

at Applebee’s—not that that would ever happen.

If something awful did happen, though, you might think “hey, at least if the world

ends, I won’t have to pay taxes.”

But, of course, you would be dead wrong… or maybe you’d just be dead… but either

way you’d still have to pay taxes.

This is the IRS’ Continuity Operations Plan, a super-entertaining 273-page piece of PDF

literature which describes exactly how the IRS intends to start separating you from your

hard-earned dollars within 12 hours of a national emergency.

That’s right, 12 hours: the IRS can restart tax collection in less time than it takes

to watch season one of Lost, and they can do it without setting up a smoke monster that’s

never adequately explained.

The plan for Continuity Operations—or COOP—lays out three tiers of functions the IRS is responsible

for: in tier one are MEFs and ESAs, in tier two are BPPs, and finally in tier three are

DPBs, because if there’s one thing government loves, it’s unnecessary acronyms—and if

there’s one thing I love, it’s saying “acronym” when something’s actually

an initialism, because I feed on their wrath of commenters.

In case you haven’t spent your free time learning all of the IRS’ internal terminology,

like I have because I’m cool, I’ll break it down for you.

MEFs are mission-essential functions: jobs unique to the IRS that are considered vital.

The IRS has three: processing tax remittances, processing tax returns, and processing tax

refunds—these are the functions that must be up and running within 12 hours.

Also in tier one are ESAs, Essential Supporting Activities: basically just things that must

happen in order to support those three Mission Essential Functions—stuff like physical

security, payroll, IT, and small baskets of stale granola bars because, let’s be honest,

it’s impossible to work without them.

In tier two are BPPs, or Business Process Priorities, which are things the IRS considers

important, but are not fully essential: stuff like taxpayer assistance, litigation of tax

fraud, various compliance activities, and finally, in Tier Three are DBPs: Deferred

Business Processes, which are functions apparently so unimportant that they are listed nowhere

in the book-length document.

In order to achieve these goals, the IRS will, of course, need leaders, and don’t worry:

they’ve got a succession plan that’s longer than…

I dunno, somethings that’s really long.

We had to furlough our comparisons department after we lost our George Soros propaganda

contract, okay?

The tip-top of the leadership pyramid is the ELT, or Executive Leadership team.

What are they leading?

Well the CCCT, of course: the Commissioner’s Core COOP Team, who will meet in a “relocation

site” within four hours of plan implementation.

As a backup, the CST, or COOP Standby Team, will head to a different safe location, where

they’ll await instructions should the CCCT be compromised.

In the meantime, they’ll provide their location and contact information to the SAMC, or Situation

and Awareness Management Team, and if there’s any time left over, they’ll study up on

their acronyms because this is starting to get confusing even to them.

If the Executive Leadership Team can’t function, there’s the AELT, the Alternate Executive

Leadership Team, which is like the Executive Leadership Team except they cuff their jeans

and listen to Vampire Weekend.

Now I know what you’re thinking: what if the ELT and AELT both can’t function?

Well, don’t worry, because there’s a failsafe: power would be transferred to the AACLT, or

Atlanta Alternative COOP Leadership Team, because Atlanta is famously immune to the

apocalypse.

At that point, the IRS’ headquarters would functionally shift from Washington to the

IRS Atlanta Customer Service building, located here, and if necessary, the IRS has a number

of other relocation sites complete with everything a tax collector would need: sleeping cots,

showers, and little stuffed calculators for them to cuddle as they drift off to sleep.

In the end, though, despite plans, additional locations, leadership continuity, file backups,

and enough acronyms to choke a horse, there’s no way for the IRS to plan for every possibility.

If all income tax collection infrastructure is truly compromised, our best indication

of what might happen comes from 1982 IRS plan designed in case of a nuclear war, which proposed

a temporary 20% across-the-board sales tax—and if that can’t happen, it probably means

that we’re all dead.

Either way, Benjamin Franklin will have been right.

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