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A high-ranking Treasury Department advisor delivered a scathing assessment of the IRS’s technology infrastructure and modernization efforts during a recent Fox News interview with Laura Ingraham.
Sam Corcos, who serves as a DOGE deputy and special advisor to the Treasury Department, revealed that the IRS’s modernization initiative has fallen decades behind schedule while exceeding its budget by $15 billion.
During the interview, Corcos explained that his primary focus during his six-month appointment has been evaluating the IRS’s modernization program and its operational budget. His findings paint a troubling picture of government inefficiency and wasteful spending.
“A huge part of our government is collecting taxes. We cannot perform the basic functions of tax collection without paying a toll to all these contractors. We really have to figure out how to get out of this hole. We’re in a really deep hole right now,” explained Corcos.
For the FIRST time, a brave DOGE staffer is pulling back the curtain on just how broken the IRS really is
Sam Corcos, now a Treasury Dept. adviser, admits the truth:
IRS systems are 30+ YEARS OUTDATED…
$15 BILLION already flushed down the drain⁰— The Gateway Pundit (@gatewaypundit) March 21, 2025
“Yeah, I’ve been brought in to look at the IRS’s modernization program in particular, as well as the operations and maintenance budget. I really care a lot about this country, and this is a huge program that’s currently 30 years behind schedule and already $15 billion over budget.”
When Ingraham asked for clarification about the program’s purpose, Corcos explained: “Yeah. The goal is to take… The IRS has some pretty legacy infrastructure. It’s actually very similar to what banks have been using—old mainframes running COBOL and assembly. The challenge has been: how do we migrate that to a modern system? Virtually every bank has already done this, but we’re still using a lot of those same systems.”
He added: “Typically, in industry, this takes a few years, maybe a few hundred million dollars. We’re now 35 years into this program. If you ask them now, it’s five years away—and it’s been five years away since 1990. It was supposed to be delivered in 1996, and it’s still five years away.”
Corcos, who brings expertise as both a software developer and CEO of a technology company, shared that while the IRS employs talented software developers, they often lack the authority to implement necessary changes. Despite facing resistance from career bureaucrats wary of oversight, he remains optimistic about potential solutions.
1. The scale of government waste is worse than anyone imagined.
$1.9 billion was sent to an NGO formed just a year ago with almost no prior activity.
The US government is losing $2 trillion per year, failing its own audits.
And it gets even worse: pic.twitter.com/gjlVKnHGbK
— Fernando Cao (@thefernandocz) March 2, 2025
“It’s hard to really grasp the scale of this because we process at the IRS about the same amount of data as a mid-size bank. A typical mid-size bank will have somewhere between 100 and 200 people in IT, and they’ll have an operations and maintenance budget in the $20 million-a-year range.”
“We have 8,000 people in IT, and our operations and maintenance budget is three and a half billion dollars a year. I don’t really know why yet, but I will tell you that 80% of that budget goes to contractors and licenses.”
Concluding the interview, Corcos highlighted the disconnect between leadership and ground-level workers as his biggest surprise since joining the Treasury Department.
“I would say it’s the disconnect between leadership and the people actually doing the work—that’s a big one. I would say that it doesn’t take a lot, just somebody who cares, to solve these problems. You find contracts that are $10, $20, $30, $50 million, and you just ask, ‘Why are we doing this?’ And everyone’s just like, ‘I don’t know.’ Then you cancel it, and nothing happens. Inertia has just taken over.”
