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As the U.S. Treasury Department grapples with the modernization of the IRS, it is crucial to understand the depth of the issue at hand. According to Sam Cork Coast, a special adviser within the Treasury Department, the IRS's legacy systems are severely outdated—some running on technology as old as COBOL and assembly language. Despite over $15 billion already spent, the modernization program is still approximately 30 years behind schedule.
Cork Coast cites that the IRS's operations can be likened to a mid-size bank which can efficiently handle a substantial amount of data with a significantly smaller workforce and budget. The IRS, on the other hand, processes similar data yet operates with an annual maintenance budget of $3.5 billion and a workforce of around 8,000.