Biden’s Build Back Better agenda has sure ruffled a lot of feathers.
One of the provisions drawing a lot of criticism is the hiring of new workers to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
Under the proposal, the IRS would hire nearly 87,000 new workers over the next decade in an effort to close the “tax gap” by collecting unpaid taxes owed by large corporations, partnerships.
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The hiring would reportedly be phased to give the department time to adjust.
At the same time, the administration wants to require financial institutions and other businesses to report a lot more information about the money coursing through their customers’ accounts.
One of the questions hovering over the administration’s plan is how the IRS could efficiently absorb such a huge increase in funding — which the Treasury report is designed to answer.
Most of the administration’s $80 billion budget hike would come in the form of so-called mandatory spending that would not have to be approved each year by Congress.
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That’s intended to provide the agency, which has sometimes seen wild budget swings, with a more reliable stream of funding.
In a series of tweets, US Rep. Lauren Boebert, and billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk responded to this issue.
Boebert said, “To get a sense of how large Biden wants to grow our IRS. ElonMusk’s Tesla has about 70,000 employees. Apple has around 154,000 globally. Biden wants our IRS to have 170,000 employees. An increase of 87,000 supposedly to monitor the 614 billionaires in America.”
To which Musk replied, “The IRS already has dedicated audit teams for high net worth individuals. The doubling of staff is for everyone else.”
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In a briefing with reporters, Treasury officials acknowledged the reporting requirements would produce a mountain of information that would take some time for the IRS to analyze.
According to the US Department of Treasury’s report, “The first step in the President’s tax administration efforts is a sustained, multi-year commitment to rebuilding the IRS, including nearly $80 billion in additional resources over the next decade.
The IRS would grow manageably (no more than around 10% annually) but also have certain funding in place to make investments with large fixed costs—like modernizing information technology, improving data analytic approaches, and hiring and training agents dedicated to complex enforcement activities.”
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The report continued, “This would make up the ground that the IRS has lost over the last decade.
During this time, the IRS budget fell by about 20%, leading to a sustained decline in its workforce particularly among specialized auditors who conduct examinations of high-income and global high net worth individuals and complex structures, like partnerships, multi-tier pass-through entities, and multinational corporations.”
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