Posted on 02/05/2024 9:13:01 PM PST by SeekAndFind
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) intends to raise its enforcement personnel by 40 percent by the end of this fiscal year, with revenue agents seeing the largest workforce increase.
For fiscal year 2024, the IRS plans to boost enforcement staff by a net 5,462 employees, according to a Jan. 29 report by IRS watchdog Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA). This would take the total number of enforcement personnel at the tax agency to 18,960 by the end of fiscal 2024, which is 40 percent higher than the staffing at the beginning of October 2023.
Out of the 5,462 net additions, 4,704 will be revenue agents who are tasked with conducting “face-to-face audits of more complex returns.”
The tax agency intends to add a net 493 special agents for the year, who are armed officials investigating “potential criminal activities.” Staffing of revenue officers will rise by 265 employees. Revenue officers are tasked with collecting delinquent taxes and securing delinquent returns.
By fiscal 2024-end, revenue agents will comprise close to 70 percent of the enforcement personnel. Armed special agents will make up 13.5 percent and revenue officers will account for 16.4 percent.
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) provided the IRS with $79.4 billion in supplemental funding that is available for the agency until September 2031. By the quarter ended Sept. 30, 2023, the agency had used $3.5 billion of the funds.
The IRS spent $1.4 billion out of the $3.5 billion IRA funds on its employees, “nearly doubling expenditures in this object class category in the fourth quarter.”
Most of the labor costs were accounted for by taxpayer services, which the TIGTA said “helped support the IRS’s efforts to hire additional customer service representatives to answer taxpayer telephone calls, as well as employees to staff Taxpayer Assistance Centers for the 2023 filing season.”
The IRS employed 89,767 people by the end of fiscal 2023. In addition to hiring staff to improve taxpayer services, the tax agency “focused on expanding enforcement on taxpayers with complex tax filings and high-dollar noncompliance to address the tax gap.”
“Tax gap” refers to the difference between taxes owed and paid to the government. The IRS claims the tax gap rose to $688 billion in 2021 alone, which is $192 billion more than estimates from 2014–16 and $138 billion more than 2017-19.
In October, IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel pointed to the tax gap to justify the importance of “increased IRS compliance efforts on key areas.” At the time, he said that the agency would use IRA funding to strengthen compliance on “high-income and high-wealth individuals” as well as businesses.
Out of the $79.4 billion in IRA funds, IRS had set aside $45.6 billion for enforcement. Taxpayer services were allocated $3.2 billion. Administration activities like business systems modernization and operations support were allocated $4.8 billion and $25.3 billion respectively.
The IRS’s decision to use most of the IRA funds for enforcement was questioned by Rep. Lisa McClain (R-Mich.) at a joint subcommittee hearing in October last year.
“This funding spree prioritizes enforcement over improving taxpayer services,” she said while noting that some of her constituents complained about call wait times when dialing the IRS. A few of them tried to get in touch with the IRS for several months but could not.
Ms. McClain said that even she had faced such difficulties. “If a private business did what the IRS does on a daily basis, it would quickly go out of business.”
In the 2022 fiscal year, the IRS raked in a record $4.9 trillion in taxes, which was $790 billion more than the previous fiscal. The agency collected $72 billion in revenues from enforcement activities, which was well above the historical average of $59 billion.
There are also concerns that the IRS could use some of its IRA funding to boost enforcement on individuals making less than $400,000 per year.
When Commissioner Werfel was asked about this during a hearing last year, he did not explicitly guarantee that the agency would not increase the number of audits for this income group.
Out of the $3.5 billion the IRS has used from IRA funding so far, almost $2 billion went to supplement its fiscal year 2023 appropriations, the TIGTA report stated.
IRS officials said they had to take $2 billion from IRA funds as the amount it received for spending in 2023 “was insufficient to cover normal operating expenses and did not include adjustments to account for inflation, estimated at approximately $460 million from fiscal year 2022.”
Out of the $3.5 billion, operations support took the largest chunk at $1.5 billion, followed by taxpayer services, business systems modernization, and enforcement activities.
The IRS calculates it would need $818 million more than last year’s funding in 2024 just to continue regular operations. The tax agency is yet to receive its fiscal 2024 appropriations.
The TIGTA pointed out that if Congress keeps the budget flat for 2024, the IRS will have to plug the $818 million shortfall using IRA funds. “This means less funds available for IRS transformation efforts.”
“Any reduction in the IRS’s annual appropriated funding, including inadequate funding to cover inflationary increases, will require the IRS to shift IRA funding to cover general operating expenses … Without the restoration in the IRS’s annual appropriation, IRA funding will cover only approximately two-thirds of the IRS’s planned modernization.”
Will these ‘tax enforcement agents’ be armed, maybe with silencers too?
Maybe I’m reading too many mystery novels.
IRS targets US citizens, Homeland Security embraces influx of illegal aliens. It’s. Mad Mad Mad Mad Mad World.
Slouching towards CW II.
Gonna make CW I look like a picnic.
You do understand people in other countries are seeing how Western governments treat their own people, right?
They think “if these governments are willing to trample their own people what would they do to us?”
“Democracy” as the government crows about seems to have lost its appeal to the Global South.
Ready for the FAIRtax?
Help us replace the Communist inspired progressive income tax with the FAIRtax and abolish the IRS!
Find out how you can help us at https://www.fairtax.org and https://www.bigsolution.org.
WE WILL NEVER BE A FREE COUNTRY SO LONG AS WE HAVE AN INCOME TAX AND AN IRS!
All that money to collect money. We’ll never get off this planet.
The IRS is preparing to conduct lawfare against legacy US citizens who don’t conform.
ore government shills with guns to shake down the populace with any stashed money at all?
Misery Thieves - scammers - flim flammers - had a return where the IRS claimed our CPA who had been doing our family’s personal, business and TRUST returns for over 30 years had made a mistake on one of them in 2020 and we owed an addl $2700 more than filed for. CPA said nope wrong! Well for the next 11-12 months we got a monthly notice asking for 60 more days to resolve the issue (get it-every month a letter from a different agent asking for an addl 60 days days to resolve). Well low and behold the last letter resolved it - our new tax liability equaled the the old amount filed + the $2700 - even ya know to pay for all those letters sent from different agents charging their time each month to look it over I suppose?
Ill bet they are lucky if they have hired 100. Nobody wants to work right now.
You’ll never get me, coppers! I follow the law.
Will they audit members of congress who cannot explain the millions in multiple bank accounts?
The IRS can make any the plans they want to
President Trump will arrive loaded for bear and will stop their little shenanigans...
12 Noon Jan 20, 2025 cant come fast enough...
Trump failed to head agencies with bulldogs answerable to him the first time around hope he learned his lesson this time
Way past Lawfare. It now Law war
A retail sales tax sounds better that an income tax… tax stuff once only instead of over and over… no taxes on income not even FICA, economic security is national security.
Our constitutional republic is the worst system of government- except for all the rest. Our system is the least bad …
Got questions about a retail sales tax? It’s the least bad system to fund a government.
We have had our CPA do our taxes for over a decade and several months ago we got hit with a $9k bill from the IRS this year. Couldn’t figure it out in any way why between the IRS, our accountant and looking over things but paid it asap to avoid further penalties. Three weeks later we got it all back with interest so my husband called again to ask what was going on. They don’t know why we were billed but I put that money in a separate savings so we can resend it if necessary. Buckle up, everyone.
No increase in border patrol. Increase in IRS. This suggests that the government plans to screw over the hard working real citizens and roll out the red carpet for the criminals who enter the country illegally. Oh and the war against the right to keep and bear arms is only against the law abiding. I wonder when they’re going to start rounding up bitter clingers and deplorables taking all their assets (civil asset forfeiture on steroids) and sending them to the showers.
You are living in a bubble if you think Trump is going to waltz in to the presidency. The Democrat base is going to vote for Biden or whatever piece of garbage is nominated. The Democrat election theft machinery in Atlanta, Philadelphia, etc is intact. The media is still spewing out lies 24/7 about crime, the election (Jan 6) , the economy, the invasion of 8 million criminal third world parasites coming to leach off those few Americans who actually pay taxes (about 53%), the phony “climate crisis”, the evil fossil fuels, etc.
In a rational universe there would be no Democrat party, but half the country drinks the Democrat koolaid already. So I fervently hope the Democrats get their asses handed to them, but I think that outcome is by no means assured.
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