The “Inflation Reduction Act” really adds 87,000 extra agents to the IRS and is more of environmental law.
While Democrats claim that this is only necessary to improve IRS services for the American people while ensuring that the wealthiest pay their fair part, logic says that this isn’t necessary unless the goal is to target far more individuals than just the wealthy.
Democrats want the Internal Revenue Service, one of the most hated federal agencies, to have more officials than the Pentagon, State Department, FBI, and Border Patrol put together.
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) negotiated the Inflation Reduction Act, which would provide the agency with $80 billion in cash to hire up to 87,000 extra workers. According to federal data, the rise would be more than double the size of the IRS workforce, which presently has 78,661 full-time employees.
The Democrats’ reconciliation plan depends on the extra funds for the IRS. In a study by the Congressional Budget Office, adding more IRS agents would boost federal revenue by more than $200 billion over the following ten years. More than half of the money is designated explicitly for “enforcement,” which includes tax audits and other duties like “digital asset monitoring.”
The IRS would then rank among the biggest federal organizations. The Defense Department estimates that the Pentagon has about 27,000 employees, and a human resources data sheet indicates that the State Department has slightly over 77,243 people.
On the FBI website, there are about 35,000 employees at the organization, and Customs and Border Protection claims to have 19,536 Border Patrol personnel working for it.
The IRS’s budget would increase by more than 600% as a result of the funding. The IRS received $12.6 billion in 2021.
Democrats assert that increasing the number of IRS officers will aid in the capture of criminals and tax fraudsters, although federal tax receipts have been rising over the previous few decades. Without more IRS officers, it is anticipated that federal tax receipts will increase to $5.7 trillion in 2027 from a little over $4 trillion in 2018.
However, Democrats’ proposed $450 billion in increased expenditure calls for new funding sources. The new spending includes $64 billion in new Affordable Care Act subsidies and $161 billion for clean power tax credits.
The nonpartisan assessment by the Joint Committee on Taxation says persons earning less than $200,000 per year will account for the majority of the additional revenue from IRS audits and scrutiny.
Contrary to Democrats’ claims that additional IRS agents are required to hunt down millionaires and billionaires who conceal their income, the committee discovered that just 4 to 9 percent of the funds raised will come from people earning more than $500,000 annually.
The Senate Republicans oppose the roughly $45 billion allocated by the measure to hire IRS agents, by noting that it would be better used for other purposes, such as aiding students in making up for lost academic time due to COVID school closures. Sen. Tim Scott’s (R-S.C.) amendment to the spending package would allocate IRS funding for education tax credits.
“When faced with the decision to spend $45 billion on America’s largest revenue collection agency, or give it back to parents to help them get their kids the help they need, the Senate needs to choose the latter option every single time,” Scott said.
However, during a Sunday Fox News interview, a Democratic senator asserted that American taxpayers shouldn’t be concerned about a significant expansion of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in legislation enacted by the Senate.
“Millions of Americans aren’t going to be impacted by that, other than getting better service from the IRS, having their telephone answered and getting the questions they need in order to comply with our tax laws,” Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland told “Fox News Sunday” host Mike Emanuel, who asked about the $80 billion expansion.
“The auditing is going to be focused on those of high income, the large corporations etc., so there’s no reason to be fearful and if you paid your taxes and comply with our laws, you should want to make sure everyone else does,” Cardin continued that many have naturally expressed fear that the government is effectively preparing an army to go after the American people.
“Can you understand how 87,000 new IRS agents would scare the heck out of millions of Americans?”
Democrat Sen. Ben Cardin: “If there’s no reason to be fearful, and if you paid your taxes and if you complied with our laws, you should want to make sure everyone else does that.” pic.twitter.com/xRwSes2CrC
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) August 7, 2022
It’s like “Comply with the tax increases and agents won’t harass you.”
To be clear, this amendment would have given teeth to the false promise from Dems that the EXPANSION would not target below 400K.
Existing IRS agents would still exist, so the lie/excuse from Twitter liberals that this was understate-your-income, get-out-of-audit-free fails.
— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) August 7, 2022
This actually poses more of a threat than reassurance in many ways. Asking them to pay more when they are already in pain would simply make matters worse.
Even if they had intended to target only big businesses and the wealthy, it would still be a devastating blow to the lower classes because businesses would likely respond by raising the price of their goods, forcing the poor to pay more in any case.
As House Minority Whip John Thune noted, “Yet 4 percent of the $80 billion is going to taxpayer services; 57 percent goes to enforcement so that the IRS can spend more time harassing taxpayers around this country.”
The Inflation Reduction Act accomplishes little to stop inflation, despite the White House’s promises to the contrary. In a study by Moody’s Analytics, the Democratic bill will only reduce the Consumer Price Index by.33 percent over the following ten years.
Sources: Dailywire, Conservativenewsdaily, Newsnationnow