IRS to Hire 30,000 Employees with New $80 Billion Funding Package to Improve Tax Enforcement
The Internal Revenue Service is set to hire nearly 30,000 new employees over the next two years as the federal agency looks to spend its $80 billion windfall in funding provided by the Biden administration.
The massive cash infusion from the Inflation Reduction Act, passed in 2022 along party lines, was intended to overhaul the federal agency’s auditing capabilities and upgrade outdated technology to transform the IRS into a “world-class” customer-service provider as well as to enhance tax enforcement.
“The IRS is going to hire more data scientists than they ever have for enforcement purposes,” Wally Adeyemo, the deputy treasury secretary, told reporters during a press conference on Thursday.
House Republicans remain unimpressed by the agency’s stated plans for modernizing its workforce and its promise to claw back nearly half a trillion dollars the government reportedly loses in tax evasion every year.
“This spending plan is too little, too late. Treasury blew through their February 17th deadline to release this plan, which shows just how unserious they are about assuring American families and small businesses they won’t be targeted under the $80 billion tax enforcement scheme in the Inflation Act,” Representative Adrian Smith (R., Neb.) of the Ways and Means Committee told Politico.
IRS commissioner Danny Werfel remains optimistic, despite the pushback, that the reforms will pave the way for a more efficient and effective tax-enforcement regime.
“I hope that we can get better at forecasting, but I just think it’s good management and leadership practice,” Werfel said during Thursday’s call with reporters. “For many, letters from the IRS in the mail could be a thing of the past. For the first time, the IRS will help taxpayers identify potential mistakes before filing.”
The IRS recently found itself in the crosshairs of Republicans on Capitol Hill following revelations that the agency had deployed agents to the house of Matt Taibbi the same day the “Twitter Files” journalist testified before the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.
During the hearing, Taibbi was grilled by Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D., Fla.), who questioned the investigative reporter’s integrity. “Being a Republican witness today certainly casts a cloud over your objectivity,” she said.
“Elon Musk spoon-fed you his cherry-picked information, which you must have suspected promotes a slanted viewpoint or, at the very least, generates a right-wing conspiracy theory. You violated your own standards, and you appear to have benefited from it,” the congresswoman said.
Wasserman Schultz’s hostility and her comments during the hearing raising the matter of Taibbi’s income led Taibbi to inform House Republicans of the IRS visit.
“I decided the committee should probably know,” Taibbi told National Review in late March about the unannounced IRS home visit, adding that the agency “is now saying there’s no problem.”
The hiring spree will enable the IRS to grow its workforce by more than 25 percent, bringing its number of employees to nearly 100,000 by the end of fiscal year 2024.
