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The Tax Man is about to come into some money! The Biden administration is set to approve a big budget increase for the Internal Revenue Service to the tune of $80 billion dollars over the next decade.
Charles Rettig, head of the IRS, has been lobbying Congress and public opinion for more money in recent months, saying that if he had a bigger budget, he could hire more auditors to catch more tax evasion and increase federal revenues.
The IRS says that its staff and enforcement resources have been steadily shrinking in the last decade. By some estimates, hiring more firepower at the IRS could bring in an extra $700 billion in taxes that would otherwise fall through the cracks.
The current IRS budget is $12 billion. The President’s proposal of an $80 billion budget is more than a 50% increase! If we think that the agency will take this money and beef itself up into a friendly agency, we are fooling ourselves. As the Wall Street Journal points out, “Getting all of that money would require a much more intrusive government than many Americans are likely to accept. But getting some of it is plausible, and nonpartisan analysts project that additional money for IRS enforcement would more than pay for itself.”
Rettig originally asked for a $1 trillion budget.
