The IRS recently met its match in the form of Mother Nature. Yes, the massive flooding in Washington, D.C., took out the IRS headquarters.
The IRS vs Mother Nature
As you know, Washington, D.C. suffered through some serious flooding problems recently. The headquarters of the IRS are located at 1111 Constitution Avenue and took a beating. Nobody messes with the IRS and comes out on top, except for Mother Nature.
The record rainfalls in Washington did a lot of damage. In the case of the headquarters of the IRS, the damage was massive. While the building didn't fall, the internal systems were more or less wiped out. This includes the loss of electrical systems, the heating system, the cooling systems and much more.
Apparently ignoring the possibility of water penetration, all major systems were located in the basement of the building. At the height of the flooding, the depth of the water in the basement was roughly 20 FEET. As you can imagine, this was not good for the systems. In fact, we the people will pay tens of millions of dollars to have everything fixed so we can be taxed efficiently. How ironic.
Alas, the damage caused to the headquarters of the IRS does not impact you and I on a practical scale. As you know from sending in your tax returns to the various odd addresses around the country, tax returns are not processed in Washington. Put in practical terms, this means you still need to file your taxes. IRS computer systems have redundancy, so they still know you are out there and have money they can collect.
No doubt you are worried about our friends at the IRS. No need to fear. They government has big plans to rebuild the IRS headquarters so water can't consume everything in the basement. In typical government methodology, this will only take six months according to projections. Can you imagine a private business sitting around and twiddling its thumbs for so long?
In truth, it has been a rough couple of years for the IRS. First, one of their trucks accidentally dropped thousands of tax returns into San Francisco Bay and now this. It would appear the agency has met its match in the form of Mother Nature. Perhaps they can file an extension with her before the next storm! Given the fact that the IRS building was only one of five government buildings in D.C. to be damaged, the extension would probably be denied.
Richard A. Chapo is with BusinessTaxRecovery.com - providing information on
taxes.
