The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is preparing for a possible government shutdown by developing a contingency plan that could mean service cutbacks due to furloughs, according to the labor union that represents IRS workers, Accounting Today reported.

On Sept, 13, the National Treasury Employees Union (NYEU) said that the IRS would remain “fully operational” in the event of a shutdown, Federal News Network (FNN) reported, which would occur after Sept. 30 if Congress does not appropriate the necessary funding to keep the government running into the next fiscal year. Eight days later, on Sept. 21, FNN reported that the NTEU said that the IRS would “partially close” if no money is appropriated.

"The IRS has yet to release its final plan, so we do not know the full scope of the impact of a government shutdown on IRS employees," NTEU national president Doreen Greenwald in a statement Friday, according to Accounting Today. "NTEU became aware from our members that the IRS was developing a new contingency plan that includes furloughing some of its workforce. We alerted our members so they could prepare for a potential government shutdown during which they may not be paid.  Our country needs federal employees to remain on the job and federal employees deserve to be paid timely. With just over a week to go, federal employees are worried that their ability to serve the American people will be disrupted, along with their paychecks that help care for their families. Shutdowns have serious consequences for federal employees, federal agencies and the public they serve. To be clear, NTEU strongly believes that Congress needs to avoid a government shutdown." 

The IRS’s existing contingency plan would allow it to use some of the extra funding from the Inflation Reduction Act to continue operations but, in an email to its members last week, the NTEU said that the IRS is “severely limited” in its use of how that funding is supposed to be spent, FNN reported.