By Michael Brigham | American Action News
“Democrats want to give the IRS $80 billion and hire
87,000 new agents so they can harass and audit taxpayers and create a new
reporting regime that targets any bank account, Venmo account, or financial
account exceeding $600 in gross inflows and outflows,” said Grover Norquist,
President of Americans for Tax Reform. “This should be alarming given the
IRS has a long history of failing to do its job and targeting taxpayers based
on their political beliefs.”
“Congressional Democrats’ answer to Americans’
frustrations with the IRS is to hire more tax bureaucrats to audit them,” said
Ryan Ellis, President of the Center for a Free Economy.
“People are fed up with being told they are tax cheats by
academics and bureaucrats who have never signed the front of a paycheck, and
that they must become the subject of fishing expedition audits in service to a
fabricated ‘tax gap,’” said Ellis. “Congress should focus on getting the
IRS to answer phone calls and correspondence in a timely manner, not on new
audits.”
Congressional Republicans are responding by proposing the
“TaxGap Reform and IRS Enforcement Act.”
“Before American taxpayers are subjected to 80,000 new
IRS agents and surveillance of their private bank accounts, let’s begin with an
accurate, independent estimate of Treasury’s so-called ‘tax gap,’” said House
Ways and Means Republican Leader Kevin Brady (R-Texas.) “This bill also
protects taxpayers from IRS targeting based on their political or religious
beliefs and closes loopholes that risk leaking private taxpayer returns.”
“The IRS financial institution reporting requirement
forces financial institutions to turn over detailed bank account information to
the IRS based on vague and ‘flexible’ criteria, such as a $600 threshold and
account inflows and outflows, which are determined by the IRS,” said U.S.
Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Mike Crapo (R-Idaho.)
“This time-draining burden disregards banking privacy in
order to squeeze more resources out of responsible Americans and
entrepreneurs. It subjects law-abiding Americans to more intense
targeting from the IRS and additional data collection, a concern that was
recently amplified by a leak of private taxpayer information out of the IRS.
I have long been critical of big data collection activities, and oppose turning
banks and brokers into government tax collectors,” said Crapo.
“My amendment prevents the undue monitoring and reporting
of sensitive American taxpayer information to the IRS by financial institutions
about deposits and withdrawals made by any individual or business,” said Crapo.
Key provisions of the TaxGap Reform and IRS Enforcement
Act:
Tax Gap Reform: Requires timely, annually-updated
information on tax gap estimates in coordination with the Joint Committee on
Taxation.
Taxpayer Protection: Prevents the IRS from targeting
Americans for their political and ideological beliefs, codifies President
Biden’s pledge to not increase audits of taxpayers making less than $400,000
per year, and prohibits the establishment of new bank reporting
requirements.
Smarter Enforcement: Requires the IRS to use existing
data and tools to improve its corporate audit selection process and increase
enforcement against high-income non-filers.
Closes the Expertise Gap: Creates an IRS enforcement
fellowship pilot program to assist with the agency’s most complex audits and
case selection decisions. Before hiring thousands of new agents, Congress
should test the effectiveness of increasing expertise in a targeted way.
Original Senate co-sponsors include John Barrasso
(R-Wyoming), Mike Braun (R-Indiana), John Boozman (R-Arkansas), Bill Cassidy
(R-Louisiana), Kevin Cramer (R-North Dakota), James Lankford (R-Oklahoma), Lisa
Murkowski (R-Alaska), Mike Rounds (R-Nebraska), Marco Rubio (R-Florida), Thom
Tillis (R-North Carolina) and Todd Young (R-Indiana).
To date there is no serious effort by congressional
Republicans to abolish the federal income tax and IRS.
_______________
Michael Brigham has written for American Action News
since the summer of 2019. His areas of expertise include foreign affairs,
government, and politics, but regardless of the subject matter, he has a nose
and an insatiable appetite for news. In his free time, he enjoys reading
nonfiction, watching a mix of comedies and true crime documentaries, and
spending time away from the swamp hiking in the foothills of the Appalachian
Mountains.
