Two things jump out from this story. First, there’s this:

As part of the government shutdown, the IRS planned to keep 12.5 percent of its workforce, or fewer than 10,000 federal employees, working. The tens of thousands of other IRS workers are furloughed, so they’re no longer paid or expected to show up to work for the time being.

It really shows how ridiculous our tax system is when it takes nearly 80,000 people in the IRS to administer it. That’s ridiculous.

Second…

First, tax refunds won’t be issued. Although tax filing season starts in January, the IRS typically takes a few weeks to start getting refunds out.

So if the shutdown ends soon, there shouldn’t be a big impact on 2018 tax refunds. If the shutdown lasts beyond the first few weeks of January, expect at least some delays on the refunds (since, after all, the government is running out of cash).

The government is not running out of cash because they are still taking money out of our paychecks every pay period. And that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? Why is it that a government shutdown means that they can keep taxing us, but somehow they don’t have the resources to refund over-payments? It just shows how much of a charade this government shutdown is.