If lawmakers fail to reach a deal on sequestration by Friday, officials say the $85 billion in federal cuts that would go into effect would clobber the Internal Revenue Service during its busiest time of year.

Employees would have to be furloughed, acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller and Acting Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin say. And since employees need to be given 30-day notice if they’ll be affected by such a furlough, those cutbacks could come in early April—crunch time for tax preparers and last minute filers.

Reuters

The result, tax pros say, would be fewer staffers to handle taxpayer questions, delayed refunds and increased fraud. “Help has been scarce and now is going to become scarcer at a time of greater need,” says Mark Steber, chief tax officer for Jackson Hewitt Tax Service.

Hardest hit would be procrastinators and people with complex returns since they are the ones most likely to need to speak with an IRS employee during the last two weeks of the filing season. Many taxpayers are still waiting for the IRS to finish updating certain forms that may not be released until early March, increasing their chances that they may get snagged by further delays. “Anything that requires a person to sit down and look at it will be affected,” says Roberton Williams, an economist with the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center based in Washington.

The furloughs would create additional holdups at a time when it is already becoming a challenge to get in touch with the IRS. Call wait times are getting longer and more than 30% of people who called the IRS toll-free number last year never got through to a human being, according to a report from the Taxpayer Advocate Service. See: The IRS is too busy to talk to you.

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To be sure, Congress could still postpone or delay the cuts, reducing the impact to the IRS and taxpayers. And because the IRS processes many returns automatically, tax pros say many taxpayers won’t be affected even if the cuts do happen. Others may be able to avoid these potential issues if they file their returns before the cuts kick in, says Steber.

Still, many experts remain worried that sequestration will lead to poorer assistance for victims of identity theft—and create a boon for tax cheats. The IRS would have fewer employees on hand to help it spot fraudulent returns, Wolin warned in his letter to lawmakers. Indeed, a report released in January from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, which oversees the IRS, found that while the IRS has increased the amount of staff it dedicates solely to identity theft, it needs additional staff to relieve the workers that are juggling fraud cases while taking calls from the taxpayer assistance line. See: Stolen tax refund? What to do next.