The IRS announced that it will be closing 43 small offices in order to save money on rent and office expenses. The move is expected to save the government an estimated $40 million and will be carried out over the next two years.
All of the offices set to close do not have walk-in taxpayer assistance and hosted fewer than 25 employees, all of whom will either work in a different IRS office building or allowed to telework. The reduction, when added to previous consolidations, will mean that the IRS has reduced office space by over 1 million square feet since 2011.
And no, the office building pictured to the right will not be closing!
Should other agencies follow in the IRS’s steps and encourage working from home as opposed to renting office space?
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Yes! What a great way to save on real estate expenses and encourage new ways of working. Sometimes you need to push the envelope to give people an incentive to work remotely. We could do the same thing here in DC. Just cut the amount of leased space in half and encourage telework and office sharing. Use some of the savings to provide a stipend to employees and replace all that expensive GFE while you are at it.
It’s always funny to me, in other articles I read related to savings it gets pointed out that $40 million is essentially a drop in the bucket, but those type of savings really do make a difference. I think we need to have a new way of looking at savings.