IRS wasted $50 million on luxury hotels, alcohol and baseball tickets | Hacker News Reader

IRS wasted $50 million on luxury hotels, alcohol and baseball tickets

rt.com

10 pointsbaghali7 comments

$50 million is a lot of money. However, it's a three year period, and it involved a lot of people (2,600 managers in on instance). How does that compare to how much normal companies "waste" on team building and training? I need those figures to make sense of the article.

Also, would you rather have the person going over your taxes to be happy, fulfilled and forgiving, or tired of their job and life?

"An August 2010 conference in Anaheim, Calif., cost the IRS $4 million. About 2,600 managers attended the event and stayed in presidential hotel suites that usually cost $1,500 to $3,500 per night. About 15 outside speakers were paid $135,000 each"

$1,538 per attendee if you do the math. No mention of how long the conference was, but that does not seem unreasonable for hotel stays, flights, food, training, etc. Also, I doubt the speaking fee was really $2 million in total. If it was, that makes the rest of the conference really cheap.

Also, it's not uncommon for hotels to upgrade their loyal customers to top-end suites if they're available.

While I wouldn't be surprised to hear about an instance of waste in government, it's also quite likely that those individuals were upgraded for free.

This seems like it could just as easily be of the same issue like the "$17 muffin" outcry for guests at a government event (which turned out to be $17 for a full breakfast).

Consider:

1) the amount a normal business spends on its employees happiness (especially tech) and the fact that the IRS likely doesn't have most of those things to begin with

2) Government pay has been mostly frozen for what, 3 years now? Would you stay in an environment where you can't advance? From a business perspective, how do you keep talent in this situation without giving anyone a raise?

3) the IRS is one of the most (unnecessarily) reviled institutions of government, even before its recent troubles. Historically it has caused people psychological stress based on this factor alone (read about it previously; I'll try to dig up some links to substantiate.)

I think the interesting discussion here is to compare what the IRS did to what a tech company would do and then dig into why we cheer one and boo the other. Unless we think of the IRS as mindless trolls and not smart people who really do want to serve the public, we have to recognize that people don't deserve to toil in stagnant unhappiness just because they chose public service instead of private.

Can you waste money on alcohol and baseball? If you're going to ask me to audit for a living you better take me to a game now and then or I'm out.

I bet IRS workers don't even get free coffee at work.

Government employees do not get free coffee, snacks, drinks, etc. Generally each office sets up a snack counter that one of the workers is responsible for maintaining, and people pay for what they consume. If it ends up making money then that gets spent on something for the whole office.

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