The I.R.S. lost roughly a quarter of its employees since President Trump took office, hampering the agency’s ability to conduct audits.
Page F1From§Eachthe wee small hours edition — 1 September 2026
IRS audit revenue hits record low under Trump; his 'likely unlawful' ballroom gets built anyway.
As it ran on the front
Two filings crossed the desk this week, hon, and they belong side by side. The first is from the watchdog: audit revenue collected by the IRS has plummeted under this administration. Fewer audits, less revenue recovered, a specific downward line on a specific government chart. That's not an opinion. That's the agency's own inspector counting it.
The second filing is from the Supreme Court: a split decision allowing construction of a ballroom for the President to proceed, over the objection of the Chief Justice, who used the words 'likely unlawful' in describing it. Also not an opinion — that's a quote from the man who runs the court.…
…(cont) Run those two next to each other and the ledger balances in an interesting direction. The government's capacity to collect what it's owed goes down. The government's tolerance for a project a majority of the same court can't confirm is lawful goes up. One number shrinks, one project grows, same season, same administration, same document trail.
Nobody is required to connect these two filings. They arrived from different agencies, on different days, about different subjects — audits and architecture don't normally share a column. But the audit line answers a question the ballroom asks: if enforcement capacity is scarce, where did it go, and who decided the ballroom was worth building before that question got answered.
The honest reconciliation is this: revenue collection from the people the IRS is supposed to audit is down, verified by the agency's own watchdog. Construction proceeds on a project the Chief Justice himself calls probably unlawful, verified by the Court's own order. Two entries, two agencies, one week. The gap between what wasn't collected and what got built anyway isn't a number this column is prepared to guess at, hon — that's for the next audit, assuming there's still a budget for one.
“They can't find the money to audit anybody who can afford a good accountant, but they found the money for a ballroom the Chief Justice himself says is probably illegal. That's not a coincidence of scarcity, that's a choice about who gets scrutinized and who gets served. Guess which side of that ledger your return sits on.”
“IRS audit rates naturally fluctuate year to year based on staffing and modernization priorities, and the ballroom is privately funded, so there's no taxpayer connection at all — well, the Supreme Court did flag some legal questions there, but that's a separate matter entirely. Two unrelated stories. Totally unrelated.”
The receipts
US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts recently let construction on President Donald Trump's White House ballroom continue in a temporary solo decision, but on Monday he sided with the three liberals against the five right-wingers who…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.