So, you’re telling me I shouldn’t expect my tax refund check any time soon?

The IRS does not cope well with chaos.

At the Internal Revenue Service, the internet has become so patchy since President Donald Trump ordered remote workers back to overcrowded offices that staff are resorting to personal hotspots, crashing their computers at the height of tax processing season, two IRS officials told Reuters. The IRS did not respond to a request for comment.

No wonder we have to fill out all those forms to file our taxes. The IRS lacks the computing capacity to calculate the amount I have to pay…except, wait a minute, then how do they know what I owe? The Social Security administration is also struggling.

At the Social Security Administration, lawyers, statisticians and other high-ranking agency officials are being sent from the Baltimore headquarters to regional offices to replace veteran claims processors who have been fired or taken buyouts from the Trump administration. But most of the new arrivals don’t know how to do the job, leading to longer wait times for disabled and elderly Americans who depend on these benefits, according to two people familiar with the situation. Asked about the changes, an SSA official said in an email that reassigned employees “have vast knowledge about our programs and services.”

I’m trying to imagine what that is like — the few times I’ve had to work with the university’s bureaucracy, I’ve been completely lost. I have vast knowledge about biology and our curriculum, but please don’t ask me to process tuition payments. Those are highly skilled jobs! OSHA is also feeling the pain.

In its drive to cut costs, DOGE says it has canceled almost 500,000 government credit cards. It has placed a $1 limit on many others, and centralized decision making within some agency headquarters. That means managers in some regional offices can’t buy basic supplies. At one center at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, it took a scientist a month to get authorization to buy $200 of dry ice to preserve urine samples, a purchase usually made at a local supermarket. Because the administration has barred many employees from making purchases, a colleague in another regional office who still has a government credit card paid for the dry ice, but it had to be shipped to the lab – at an additional cost of $100, according to a source familiar with the matter.

What can you buy on a credit card with a $1 limit?

They keep saying they’re saving us billions with increased efficiency, but all I see is greater inefficiency. I don’t see how that can save us any money at all. They’re just lying to us.

I’ll be curious to see if, at the end of this fiscal year, we’re deeper in the hole than last year. I predict that we will be.