The Patriot Post® · Your Tax Dollars at Work: A New and 'Improved' IRS
If you’re wondering whatever happened to Joe Biden’s uproariously misnamed $740 billion Inflation Reduction Act, wonder no more. Your tax dollars therein are hard at work producing a new and improved version of the Infernal Revenue Service.
Recall that within the aforementioned piece of, er, legislation was an $80 billion goody bag for the IRS, which the Biden administration is now using to create a kinder, gentler edition of the federal government’s most reviled institution. Aside from the FBI. And the CDC. And the Department of Education. As the Associated Press reports:
While some Republicans have suggested [wait for it!] without evidence that the money from the Democrats’ landmark climate change and health care bill would help create a mob of armed auditors to harass middle-class taxpayers, new IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel said it will not include spending for new agents with guns.
Suuuure it won’t. And far be it from the IRS to target and intimidate the Democrats’ political enemies.
They’re from the government and they’re here to help. Honest.
As an aside, notice how the AP won’t even call the Inflation Reduction Act the Inflation Reduction Act anymore. Instead, these enlightened scribes helpfully rebranded it as the Democrats’ landmark climate change and health care bill™. If only Republican presidents could find themselves a PR outfit as slick as the AP.
The IRS’s newly released 150-page Strategic Plan lays out the specifics of this $80 billion bonfire in sleep-inducing detail. As for those well-armed tax collectors, the AP insists there’s nothing to worry about. “No hiring boost is foreseen for the criminal investigation unit, which represents 3% of the agency’s workforce and employed roughly 2,077 special agents as of the 2022 budget year, according to the IRS’ annual report. Those are the agents who may be armed.”
See there? Only 2,077 tax collectors will be toting guns, not “a mob of armed auditors.”
More of the truth can be found in certain well-hidden numbers, such as the table on page 127 of the agency’s strategic plan, which tells us that $47.4 billion — some 60% of this funding increase — will be dedicated to “expanded enforcement on taxpayers with complex tax filings and high-dollar noncompliance to address the tax gap.”
Got that, Mr. and Mrs. Small Business Owner?
“Some improvements have been long expected,” says the AP, “such as bringing more paper-based systems online and answering taxpayers’ phone calls promptly. Others are more ambitious: continuing to explore ways to create a government-operated electronic free-file tax return system, for example.”
As the jaundice-eyed editors of the Wall Street Journal editorial board observe: “Werfel’s report says the agency will focus on a ‘world class customer service operation’ with ‘cutting-edge technology,’ ‘dramatically improve[d] services,’ and a ‘highly skilled, diverse workforce. We’ll believe that when the IRS answers our phone calls.”
Your new and improved IRS will also be better equipped to enforce the Left’s diversity, equity, and inclusion dogma. As the Journal’s editors note:
The agency plans to arm enforcement teams with “advanced analytics” and “emerging technologies” — alongside an IRS promise that this snooping will happen “responsibly” and respect “taxpayer privacy and civil liberties.” Glad to hear it. The agency will also devote new resources to ensuring that taxpayers “receive the tax incentives for which they are eligible.” In other words, the agency will take on a new social-justice role in delivering welfare payments.
Much has been made by Republicans about a 2021 Treasury document showing that the agency is poised to hire 87,000 new employees. Democrats deny this, but Commissioner Werfel’s report reveals plans to hire 30,000 more employees in fiscal 2023 and 2024 alone — including nearly 9,000 in enforcement and nearly 14,000 in taxpayer services. That’s a pretty sizable boost to an agency whose current headcount is 79,000.
Will the GOP-controlled House be able to rein in this historically partisan agency? Let’s just say we’re not brimming with confidence.
The IRS no doubt expects us to take comfort in its Mission Statement, which vows to “provide America’s taxpayers top-quality service by helping them understand and meet their tax responsibilities and enforce the law with integrity and fairness to all.”
Somehow, though, we’re not so sure.
Neither Lois Lerner nor Catherine Engelbrecht could be reached for comment.