(The Center Square) – President Joe Biden’s call for funding for 87,000 IRS agents to audit Americans has raised questions about whether the new rash of auditing will target poorer Americans or be politically motivated.
The Inflation Reduction Act included $80 billion to beef up IRS efforts, which Biden says will more than pay for itself in new audits.
Biden’s nominee to lead the Internal Revenue Service, Daniel Werfel, addressed concerns over this policy at his recent confirmation hearing but promised lawmakers the audits would target wealthier Americans.
“…the audit and compliance priorities will be focused on enhancing the IRS’ capabilities to ensure America’s highest earners comply with applicable tax laws,” Werfel said.
Critics have argued, though, there are not enough wealthy Americans to audit to justify tens of billions of dollars for auditors. They also argue the IRS’ behavior in recent years suggests the IRS will go after poorer and conservative Americans.
“The Joint Committee on Taxation, Congress’s official tax scorekeeper, said that 78% to 90% of the money raised from under-reported income would likely come from those making less than $200,000 a year, with nearly half of the audits hitting Americans making $75,000 per year or less,” House Ways and Means Republicans said in a statement.
The Informing America Foundation released a new report detailing the IRS’ recent missteps.
“The IRS is targeting low-income Americans and conservative nonprofits,” the report said. “President Biden massively expanded the IRS, which improperly scrutinized conservative nonprofits, Americans in the black belt, and more.”
The IRS reached a $3.5 million settlement with hundreds of Tea Party groups in 2018 after news broke that the Obama administration’s IRS targeted those groups.
In 2021, the IRS had to overturn its own ruling after it denied a Christian group nonprofit status. The agent who made the ruling said the group did not qualify because “Bible teachings are typically affiliated with the [Republican] party and candidates.”
Christians Engaged, the group in question, was able to get the ruling overturned, but critics say this kind of case shows the mentality of at least some IRS employees.
“The recent determination on Christians Engaged’s tax-exempt status further exposed the corruption and liberal bias running rampant at the IRS,” U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, said at the time. “This discriminatory action against a Christian nonprofit is an overt attack on religious liberty by a tyrannical federal government. Moreover, this decision comes at a time when members of both parties are trying to increase the ability of the IRS to harass individual Americans, businesses, and organizations.”
Just this year, the IRS announced a program to crack down on tip reporting from waiters and waitresses.
“Strange. I was reliably told that the expanded IRS would only target the rich…,” Hunter Estes, communications director for Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves, wrote on Twitter.
Meanwhile, the IRS is steeped in other issues. As The Center Square previously reported, the agency faces major backlogs, questions over millions of destroyed documents and more.
The House Ways and Means Committee sent a letter earlier this month to the Biden administration raising questions about how thousands of IRS documents were leaked to ProPublica. The leak may have had political motives, since it was used to prove, as ProPublica put it, that “the very richest pay lower rates than the merely rich.”
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told the Senate Finance Committee in June 2021 that she would look into the leak, but so far Congress has received few answers.
America First Legal, a conservative group led by former Trump administration officials, has also raised concerns about the Treasury Department’s recent equity commitments. They say those policies could be used to make decisions about who to audit based on race.
“The notion that race should play any role whatsoever in the IRS’s operations is absurd, offensive to the American ideal, and illegal,” said Gene Hamilton, America First Legal Vice-President and General Counsel. “But the Biden Administration is so blinded by its relentless obsession with race that it is willing to make IRS enforcement decisions based on the race of American citizens. We will fight their attempts to erode equality under the law and expose their attempts to inject toxic ‘equity’-based policies throughout the federal government.”
“ Biden says will more than pay for itself in new audits.”,,,,only if guys like Joe’s crime family and the Al Sharpton’s of his party of unemployed speech givers, get audited and FORCED to pay their fair share. Just who are their victims these hypocrites think they are fooling? The IRS unbalanced scales of discriminatory taxation, based not on the productive creation of wealth that creates incentives for people to create not just enough for themselves but a surplus to be taxed for others,,, but the reductive redistribution of wealth that disincentivizes THE PEOPLE to even want to get out of bed in the morning, just for the privilege of getting financially whacked by some IRS agent, while some unemployed street protester on the dole can destroy at will with no fear of financial of legal ramifications? What they obviously want is the Equity of socialist equally redistributed poverty, than the Equality of equal opportunity to excel. These fools who have no concept of what motivates the human spirit, lacking any spiritual guidance themselves, living their ditto head Democrat talking point lives that resemble shades of ditto copied ideologies of fake photo negatives, never having a positive image of themselves to present as an example. Our tax laws have done more to divide this nation into special classes of the privileged who pay no tax, and the life failures who not only pay no taxes, but tax the patience and financial ability of the others who do.
YOU Can bet, they will NOT EVER Go after Sharpton, OR BLM< ANTIFA etc. JUST white conservative americans.
They also argue the IRS’ behavior in recent years suggests the IRS will go after poorer and conservative Americans.
Just this year, the IRS announced a program to crack down on tip reporting from waiters and waitresses.
“Strange. I was reliably told that the expanded IRS would only target the rich…,”
In 2021, the IRS had to overturn its own ruling after it denied a Christian group nonprofit status. The agent who made the ruling said the group did not qualify because “Bible teachings are typically affiliated with the [Republican] party and candidates.”
This treasonous, dishonest, destructive, woke Socialist Democrat Party’s objective is to deliberately lie, cheat and steal. To disregard the U.S. Constitution and our laws, in order to take total control of the American people by their restricting U.S. citizens their constitutional rights and freedoms. Stopping oil production, increase Spending, Taxes and the inflation cost of everything and bring American commerce and economy to its knees by any way, unlimited illegal immigrant, promotion and support Socialism, enforced by their political DOJ and their FBI and IRS police Gestapo.
Then access power and retain it by any means available –
No matter the costs to the people, the government or the nation.
This treasonous, hateful, destructive, immoral, socialist Democrat Party, their RINOs and their corrupt, demented puppet president has become our country’s most destructive and deadliest ENEMY!
From what I’ve heard the systems that the IRS use are from back in the stone age of computing, late refunds etc. The money used for the trigger happy agents, remember they are to be armed, should be put into the system which would be more efficient and cost effective than personell and probably find more tax cheats. Considering the equity hiring I doubt the new agents can’t figure out their own taxes and use a tax firm to do them!
YES to both. YES,. the horde of new, ARMED IRS agents will target the poor and middle class, because they can’t fight back against their unconstitutional powers to seize income and property without having to prove you owe ANYTHING. And YES, they will be used to target anybody who openly disagrees with the power-mad Demmunists and their destructive agenda for this country, as well as anybody they perceive as a political opponent.
After all, it is OBAMA’S hand up the backside of the senile sock puppet PROXY in the White House, and if you recall, it was HIS IRS that first set the precedent of using their immense, unconstitutional powers to harass and ROB Obama’s political opponents. Now they’ve kicked it up a notch by unleashing a horde of heavily armed “agents” with the authority to use LETHAL FORCE against those unwilling to fund their tyranny.
Hence why they have been working hard to DISARM WE the people… SO WE are LESS capable of resisting.