[Federalist] The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is deploying most of its expanded army of federal tax collectors against the middle class, contradicting Democrats’ promises when they hiked its budget by $80 billion over the next 10 years in 2022."President Joe Biden will seek $80 billion to fund enhanced Internal Revenue Service enforcement of high-earners," CNN claimed in 2021. NPR claimed in 2022 that the IRS would spend the money, among other things, on "hiring new enforcement agents" and "auditing the wealthiest Americans." Last month, Bloomberg kept the narrative up, claiming this year’s even higher IRS spending request from the Biden administration was meant to "build[] up its enforcement efforts on wealthy individuals and companies that aren’t paying what they owe."
The IRS last year claimed the extra $80 billion would help the IRS "restore fairness in tax compliance by shifting more attention onto high-income earners, partnerships, large corporations and promoters abusing the nation’s tax laws. The effort... will center on adding more attention on wealthy, partnerships and other high earners that have seen sharp drops in audit rates for these taxpayer segments during the past decade. "
According to a new audit of the agency, as of just less than a year ago, 63 percent of new IRS audit inquiries were to middle-income earners who made less than $200,000.
"Only a small overall share reached the very highest earners, while 80% of audits covered filers earning less than $1 million," the Wall Street Journal editorial board reported last week. "Don’t forget to save those charitable-giving receipts."
