118th Congress Begins By Republicans' Protecting Wealthy and Well-Connected Tax Evaders

After a week of Republican chaos, confusion, and crisis, Republicans are starting the new Congress by now heading to the floor to protect tax cheats and add $114B to the deficit over 10 years.

REMEMBER: Republican budget cuts have decimated the IRS, leaving it understaffed and underfunded. An estimated $160B in taxes goes uncollected from the top 1% alone while audit rates of wage earners soar. That's why the Inflation Reduction Act made a multiyear investment in tax fairness and modernizing IRS.

TUNE IN TO SEE WAYS AND MEANS DEMOCRATS CORRECT THE RECORD

First House GOP Bill Protects Tax Evaders and Increases the Deficit

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:House GOP's First Bill: A Misleading Gambit to Protect Interests of Wealthy Tax Cheats

The House GOP campaign ignores the reality of today's IRS — which has resulted from the sharp budget cuts that Republicans have pushed since 2010 — as well as the harm that would flow from rescinding much of the Inflation Reduction Act's new IRS funding. The upcoming debate needs to cut through the obfuscation of the House Republican campaign and focus on honest and pertinent numbers.

Consider, in 2021, the IRS had 8,321 skilled auditors. That's 40 percent fewer than the agency had in 2010, the year before House Republicans were in the majority and began driving the last decade of steep IRS budget cuts.

Moreover, it's 2,284 fewer revenue agents than the IRS had in 1954 — not a typo. The last time the IRS had fewer revenue agents than it has today was in 1953. Today's economy is seven times larger than it was in 1953 and our population has more than doubled since then. Today's tax returns of wealthy people and large multinationals are more complex and global, which take more time for auditors to review.

Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget:IRS Funding Repeal Could Cost Over $100 Billion, Encourage Tax Cheating

The House is likely to vote today on a bill that would rescind roughly $70 billion of Internal Revenue Service (IRS) funding over the next decade. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the bill would increase deficits by more than $100 billion over the next decade while encouraging tax cheating, expanding the tax gap, and undermining a policy supported by every President since Ronald Reagan, including Donald Trump.

Treasury and IRS Defend the Inflation Reduction Act's Multiyear Investment in IRS

Secretary of the Treasury Janet L. Yellen:Letter to IRS Commissioner in Support of Funding for IRS

Contrary to the misinformation from opponents of this legislation, small business or households earning $400,000 per year or less will not see an increase in the chances that they are audited.

Instead, enforcement resources will focus on high-end noncompliance. There, sustained, multi-year funding is so critical to the agency's ability to make the investments needed to pursue a robust attack on the tax gap by targeting crucial challenges, like large corporations, high-net-worth individuals and complex pass-throughs, where today the IRS has resources to initiate just 7,500 audits annually out of more than 4 million returns received.

Republican-Appointed Former IRS Commissioner:IRS sets the record straight: We're going after tax evaders, not honest Americans

The recent debate over providing badly needed funding to the IRS is filled with outright false suggestions about what the agency and our hard-working employees do — as well as how the additional resources will be handled.

The bottom line is this: These resources are absolutely not about increasing audit scrutiny on small business or middle-income American.

Republicans Disinformation Campaign has been Widely Debunked

AP Fact Check:GOP skews budget bill's impact on IRS, taxes

HOUSE MINORITY LEADER KEVIN MCCARTHY, R-CALIF.: "Do you make $75,000 or less? Democrats' new army of 87,000 IRS agents will be coming for you -- with 710,000 new audits for Americans who earn less than $75k." – tweet Tuesday.

SEN. TED CRUZ, R-TEXAS: "The Manchin-Schumer bill will create 87,000 new IRS agents to target regular, everyday Americans." — Friday tweet.

THE FACTS: That's misleading. Last year, before the bill emerged, the Treasury Department had proposed a plan to hire roughly that many IRS employees over the next decade if it got the money. The IRS will be releasing final numbers for its hiring plans in the coming months, according to a Treasury official. But those employees will not all be hired at the same time, they will not all be auditors and many will be replacing employees who are expected to quit or retire, experts and officials say.

Time:Trump Allies Are Attacking Biden For a Plan to Hire 87,000 New IRS Agents That Doesn't Exist

There's only one problem. It's not true.

USA TODAY: Fact check: False claims about IRS enforcement, taxes on Americans

Our rating: False.

The Washington Post: Hyperbolic GOP claims about IRS agents and audits

The Biden administration is planning to hire 87,000 IRS employees over the next 10 years — not IRS audit agents — and many will be replacing people who will retire soon. That's a big difference.

As for hyperbolic claims about audits, McCarthy's tweet lacks important context. The numbers reflect a relatively small percentage increase for people making less than $75,000 — and a big one for the superwealthy. In any case, the calculations relied on a CBO analysis that the agency says was not intended to be used in this way, making the numbers even more dubious.

McCarthy earns Three Pinocchios.

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