It’s that time of the year again. Have you finished filing your return?

Doing taxes this season has been particularly fraught – for both taxpayers and the Internal Revenue Service. It’s been a year since DOGE slashed federal funding and cut droves of federal employees. Those departures hit the IRS hard. Its leadership has largely turned over.

Also, Republicans in Congress took back billions of dollars the agency had received to improve its systems. Then, they gave the IRS even more tax code changes to enforce.

Can the IRS handle it all? And what do taxes – and a functional tax agency – have to do with the strength of U.S. democracy? We sit down with a panel of experts to find out.

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