President Joe Biden’s administration wants to add 87,000 employees to the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) workforce, Politico reported.
The hiring effort, spread out over 10 years, is part of Biden’s plan to crack down on tax cheats, according to Politico. Biden also wants to increase the IRS’s budget by $80 billion. The $80 billion IRS budget increase would not have to be approved by Congress each year as the funds would be classified as mandatory spending, Politico noted.
Additional funds would be used to update the IRS’s computer systems and other services, as well as beefing up audits, the Politico report claimed.
“These include increased reporting requirements, new tools for auditors, massively increasing the IRS’s budget, and new rules on cryptocurrency, among other measures.” https://t.co/7XCVTHkls9
— Hamza Shaban (@hshaban) May 20, 2021
The Treasury department estimated that increasing tax enforcement would create $340 billion in savings over ten years, Politico reported. Biden’s administration believes that another $460 billion in savings could be added if the U.S. adopts stricter income reporting requirements, according to Politico. (RELATED: IRS Glitch Leads To Thousands Of Foreign Workers Getting Stimulus Checks)
The U.S. Treasury Department said the personnel increase would be phased in to allow the IRS’s infrastructure to adjust in a report Thursday. The report claimed that that the IRS would not increase its workforce by more than a “manageable” 15% per year. With the additional $80 million, the budget would only increase by 10% per year.
The Treasury Department added, “The president’s compliance proposals are designed to ameliorate existing inequities by focusing on high-end evasion.”
I’m urging the IRS to work with Congress to find ways to close the “tax gap,” the hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes that go unpaid annually. Part of the solution is increasing the IRS’s budget, which has dropped substantially since 2010. Read my letter: pic.twitter.com/mt6FicleXH
— Senator Dianne Feinstein (@SenFeinstein) May 13, 2021
“These unpaid taxes come at a cost to American households and compliant taxpayers as policymakers choose rising deficits, lower spending on necessary priorities, or further tax increases to compensate for the lost revenue,” the Treasury Department goes on to say.
In 2019, the Treasury Department said, uncollected taxes amounted to $554 billion. However, IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig recently claimed that uncollected taxes could amount to $1 trillion per year, according to Politico.