Team Biden plans to deploy an army of IRS agents to target American middle-class families and small-business owners, Republican lawmakers warned after Democrats pushed the so-called Inflation Reduction Act through the Senate on Aug. 7.
The legislation, approved by a party-line vote of 51 to 50 with Kamala Harris casting the tie-breaking vote, allocates $80 billion to the IRS to hire 87,000 new agents. Of those funds, $45.6 billion is earmarked for tax enforcement activities.
“Joe Biden is building an army of IRS agents to harass and bully the middle class. It’s something that should concern every American taxpayer,” Minnesota Republican Rep. Tom Emmer, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), told Fox News Digital.
“The IRS targeted conservatives during the Obama administration, so it’s fair to wonder whether Joe Biden will use his new IRS army to attack conservatives,” Emmer added.
After news broke that the FBI had raided former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property in Florida, Emmer took to Twitter to issue another warning: “If Joe Biden can weaponize the DOJ against his political opponents, he can weaponize 87,000 IRS agents against conservatives everywhere.”
Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz tweeted: “The FBI raiding Donald Trump is unprecedented. It is corrupt & an abuse of power. And with 87K new IRS agents, they’re coming for YOU too.”
Indiana Republican Sen. Mike Braun, a member of the Senate Budget Committee, tweeted: “Large corporations retain teams of lawyers to deal with IRS audits. Small businesses don’t. 87,000 new IRS agents to audit small businesses is one more insult to the injury of 10% inflation.”
Alabama Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the Senate’s massive spending bill gives the IRS “more manpower to go after small businesses and the middle class.”
Democrats insist that the 87,000 new agents will simply enable the IRS to give Americans better service.
Maryland Democrat Sen. Ben Cardin, in an appearance on “Fox News Sunday,” was asked by host Mike Emmanuel why the hiring of tens of thousands of IRS agents shouldn't “scare[s] the heck out of millions of Americans.”
Cardin resplied: “Millions of Americans aren’t going to be impacted by that other than getting better service from the IRS having their telephone answer getting the questions they need in order to comply with our tax laws. The auditing is going to be focused on those of high income, the large corporations, etc.”
Cardin continued: “So there’s no reason to be fearful. And if you have paid your taxes and if you comply with our laws, you should want to make sure everyone else does that.”
IRS commissioner Charles P. Rettig recently told Congress that, if the tax collection agency received the requested $80 billion via the Inflation Reduction Act, the IRS would not increase audits on Americans making under $400,000 a year.
“These resources are absolutely not about increasing audit scrutiny on small businesses or middle-income Americans. As we have been planning, our investment of these enforcement resources is designed around Treasury’s directive that audit rates will not rise relative to recent years for households making under $400,000,” the commissioner wrote in a letter to Congress.
But Americans are leery of such promises. Even the leftist Washington Post has admitted that over half of the tax audits last year were conducted on Americans making less than $75,000.
Here are @nickgillespie and @kattimpf talking with @greggutfeld about the Inflation Reduction Act. pic.twitter.com/UGkZbW6TXH
— Andrew Wimsatt 🖐 (@ajwimsatt) August 9, 2022
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