(Deroy Murdock, Headline USA) The U.S. House of Representatives voted on Friday along party lines, 220-207, to approve the fraudulently titled Inflation Reduction Act. Every Democrat voted Yea. Every Republican voted Nay. President Joe Biden is expected to sign the IRA into law next week.
This $739 billion tax-and-spending bacchanale includes $80 billion to swell the Internal Revenue Service’s payroll from 93,654 to 180,506—up 92.7%.
The IRS will have more staffers than the 148,511 aggregated employees at the federal departments of Commerce (35,406), Education (3,532), Energy (13,809), Health and Human Services (64,985), Housing and Urban Development (7,334), Labor (13,720), and State (9,725), as the Office of Personnel Management tallied them in 2018—the latest totals available.
These 86,852 new IRS agents are a bit much, if Democrats want them to find billionaires, capsize them, and shake them until the gold bars and stock certificates cascade from their pockets. Forbes counts 735 American billionaires. IRA would underwrite 118 IRS agents per billionaire.
Don’t be shocked if IRS audits aim lower—much lower—as they already do.
The Government Accountability Office reported in May that in Tax Year 2019, IRS audited 196,717 returns from earners between $1 and $25,000; 72,669 between $25,000 and $50,000; and 32,285 between $50,000 and $75,000.
IRS audited 379,357 returns from filers with incomes below $1 million.
IRS that year also audited 205 returns whose only gains were from the Earned Income Tax Credit.
Thus, IRA will underwrite brand-new IRS agents—enough to populate Newport Beach, California—to audit poor, working class, and middle-income taxpayers.
“Are they going to have a strike force that goes in with [AR-15s] already loaded…?” Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, told Fox & Friends on Thursday.
He added: “I think they’re going after middle-class and small businesspeople because basically they think anybody who has pass-through income is a crook, and they aren’t paying their fair share.”
Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, tried to fix this last Sunday.
According to its official description, his amendment to IRA attempted “To prevent the use of additional Internal Revenue Service Funds from being used for audits of taxpayers with taxable incomes below $400,000 in order to protect low- and middle-income earning American taxpayers from an onslaught of audits from an army of new Internal Revenue Service auditors.”
Crapo’s measure died in a 50–50 tie, as every Republican voted Yea, and every Democrat said Nay. So much for the latter’s lies about defending the little guy.
The IRS’s career page describes the employees it seeks.
The “major duties” of its Criminal Investigation Special Agents far exceed forensic accounting and cashflow analysis.
They include: “Carry a firearm and be willing to use deadly force, if necessary” and “Be willing and able to participate in arrests, execution of search warrants, and other dangerous assignments.”
GAO’s snapshot of the IRS’s arsenal in December 2017 included 4,487 guns and 5,062,006 rounds of ammunition. IRS also purchased $700,000 of fresh ammo early this year.
Like atomic weapons, the IRS’s guns can accomplish plenty without going “Boom!” Deterrence can prevent hostile military attacks as well as tax avoidance.
As Robert M. Wood wrote in Forbes: “Some of the guns the IRS has are fully automatic machine guns. Compared to seeing gun-toting IRS agents at your door, a correspondence audit doesn’t sound too bad.”
Even worse, armed IRS agents lack basic gun control.
“An audit report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration covering 2009 to 2011 said that IRS Agents accidentally discharged their guns 11 times during that time,” Wood further explained. “The report says that IRS agents fired their guns accidentally more times than they did intentionally. Some of the misfires caused property damage or personal injury.”
Democrats should pay a high price in November for letting slip the dogs of the new Internal Repression Service. For now, they are salivating like Pavlov’s puppies over higher taxes, rampant audits, and pistol-packing revenue officers.
Manhattan-based political commentor Deroy Murdock is a Fox News contributor.
