Congressional Democrats last year showered the IRS with $80 billion in new funding in an effort to close an estimated $600 billion “tax gap,” the difference between income taxes actually owed and those actually collected. This was supposed to help pay for the Biden administration’s ongoing spendapalooza that has run the national debt to more than $30 trillion.
The move will essentially double the size of the IRS in coming years, allowing it to hire 87,000 employees over the next decade — many of whom would replace outgoing staff — and increasing its enforcement capabilities. Republicans warned that more middle- and lower-income Americans would find themselves in the agency’s sights, but Democrats insisted that only wealthy Americans would face an increase in audits.
Yet a recent examination of IRS data shows that the agency in 2022 “continued historic trends of hassling primarily low-income taxpayers,” Liz Wolfe of Reason wrote last week, “with relatively few millionaires and billionaires getting caught up in the audit sweep.”
