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Washington, D.C.— Internal Revenue Service (IRS) funding cuts in recent years, compounded by the severe impact of sequestration, will result tomorrow in the closing of all public IRS services.

“This is a very unfortunate state,” said President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU). Tomorrow’s unpaid furlough day for IRS employees is the first of five such days planned by the IRS over the course of the summer.

President Kelley noted the IRS budget for the current fiscal year, slashed deeply by sequestration, is about $1 billion less than it was in fiscal 2010, resulting in 10,000 fewer employees. Overall, the IRS workforce has been cut by approximately 20 percent since 1995. In 1995, the IRS had a staff of 114,064 to administer the tax law, while today they have just 90,500 to administer a much more complicated tax code and growing number of taxpayers.

Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson identified chronic underfunding of the IRS as one of the top problems facing the agency, noting the reductions to the IRS budget over the past two years and additional cuts under sequestration.

Agency funding was reduced by $25 million under the fiscal 2011 continuing resolution; then came a cut of $305 million for fiscal 2012, followed by the impact of the $600 million sequestration cut in 2013.

The planned IRS furlough days will occur in a compressed time frame between tomorrow and the September 30 end of the current fiscal year, Kelley noted, because the agency did not want to disrupt the tax-filing season and delay taxpayer refunds. Sequestration took effect on March 1.

Sequestration was established in the 2011 Budget Control Act and mandates cuts in federal agency budgets of $85 billion this fiscal year—but it continues for another nine fiscal years with budget cuts totaling $102 billion in each of those years.

President Kelley also emphasized the impact on IRS employees who, like other federal workers, are in the midst of a three-year pay freeze and who face the same kind of financial pressures impacting most Americans.

“Losing 10 percent of your pay in a single pay period is no small matter,” President Kelley said, “especially when you face the same rising prices for necessities that are affecting your friends, neighbors and community.”

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing 150,000 employees in 31 agencies and departments.