Instead of creating, innovating and providing valuable goods and services to make Americans’ lives better, auditors, accountants and lawyers will go back and forth in zero-sum tax battles. It would account for the lost productivity from funneling 87,000 more Americans into jobs at the IRS, not to mention the countervailing surge of accountants and tax lawyers in the private sector who will go to work on behalf of taxpayers. And since the IRS will be casting a wider net (instead of targeting limited resources on the most dubious returns), a larger share of the audit burden will land on honest taxpayers.Īn accurate accounting of the cost borne by Americans from the new IRS funding would also include the untold millions of additional hours taxpayers will spend navigating audits. But all that money comes out of the pockets of taxpayers one way or another. If the extra tax collections outweigh the new IRS costs, then that means there’s a net increase in money the rest of the federal government can spend. insiders and technocrats refer to the expected return on investment of IRS funding, they’re talking about the ratio of additional tax collections per dollar the IRS spends. If the level of new funding is inefficient from the government’s perspective, it’s much worse for families and small businesses in the real economy. Even former IRS Commissioner John Koskinen (an Obama appointee who had previously called for more funding) has suggested this doubling of the IRS budget is overkill, stating in an interview, “I’m not sure you’d be able to efficiently use that much money. By 2030, this windfall will add an additional $14.3 billion annually on top of the agency’s regular appropriations, which stood at $12.6 billion in fiscal year 2022. It’s worse when Americans must pay to boost funding of “services” like more audits and litigation.Īmericans should be especially wary because of the sheer volume of new funding the IRS will receive. It’s bad enough when the federal government spends tens of billions of taxpayer dollars on services Americans don’t need. Americans are right to be wary of giving the agency more resources. It has allowed vast troves of taxpayer data to leak, promulgated needlessly convoluted regulations, targeted conservative non-profit groups and subjected countless Americans to intrusive audits by overzealous examiners. The IRS’s poor reputation is well-earned.
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