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The longest government shutdown in U.S. history came to an end this morning, sending thousands of federal employees - including staff at the Internal Revenue Service - back to work for the first time in 44 days.

For longtime IRS employee Daniel Scharpenburg, the reopening marks the end of a scramble to make ends meet.

I and many of my coworkers have been out of the office for over 40 days, so all our routines have been disrupted. And that's, you know, that's minor compared to things like not getting a paycheck, but it is going to take a minute to get back into the swing of things, and to get to work in the morning and work a day, and I'm probably returning to work to 500 emails, Scharpenburg said.

The return to the office comes with twin backlogs - the

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