IRS hiring hundreds more armed agents amid tax crackdown on low-income households

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is currently looking to hire 360 armed special agents across all 50 states for its Criminal Investigation unit, the law enforcement branch of the IRS.

The major duties listed on the IRS website include the willingness to use “deadly force” though this requirement has been scrubbed from the job posting which opened mid-February:

Adhere to the highest standards of conduct, especially in maintaining honesty and integrity.

Work a minimum of 50 hours per week, which may include irregular hours, and be on-call 24/7, including holidays and weekends.

Maintain a level of fitness necessary to effectively respond to life-threatening situations on the job.

Be willing and able to participate in arrests, execution of search warrants, and other dangerous assignments.

Carry a firearm; must be prepared to protect him/herself or others from physical attacks at any time and without warning and use firearms in life-threatening situations; must be willing to use force up to and including the use of deadly force.

The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 has allocated $80 billion to the IRS, with $45.6 billion earmarked for tax enforcement. 

The Act also includes a corporate tax, which would hit the middle and lower classes hard, despite Joe Biden’s pledge not to increase taxes for those making less than $400,000 per year.

“As a result of the policy, those with incomes below $200,000 would pay almost $17 billion in combined additional tax in 2023, according to a Joint Committee on Taxation analysis published July 29,” reports CNBC. According to the analysis, only 4%–9% of tax revenue from the Act’s $80 billion investment will come from businesses making above $500,000. 

National Taxpayers Union Foundation Executive Vice President Joe Hinchman told The New York Post why Biden’s IRS is targeting small and medium sized businesses (SMBs).

“The IRS will have to target small and medium businesses because they won’t fight back,” said Hinchman.

“We’ve seen this play out before … the IRS says ‘We’re going after the rich’ but when you’re trying to raise that much money, the rich can only get you so far.”  

Hinchman explains that the IRS typically goes after SMBs also because they don’t have the financial bandwidth to challenge the agency in court.  

“The approach here is to double the IRS workforce, take the leash off, and see how much they can collect,” Hinchman added. “I think they’ll collect it but it will be quite painful.” 

According to a report from Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), the IRS targeted mostly low-income families for audits while largely steering clear of high-income earners in fiscal year 2022.

TRAC analyzed data it received from the IRS and found that the agency preyed on lower-income brackets last year who were collecting earned income tax credits. 

In fact, the report says the IRS subjected low-income taxpayers to “unbelievably high” audit rates — over five times more than nearly everyone else. On the other hand, just 1.1% of millionaires — those who earned a million dollars or more in positive income — were audited. 

Despite its large cash infusion from the Inflation Reduction Act, the IRS found it easier to conduct correspondence audits through the mail, which is more feasible with lower income tax returns. Such audits are automated and usually begin with a letter from the IRS asking the taxpayer for more documentation. In FY 2022, 85% of all 1040 audits began with such a letter, as did 48% of millionaire audits. 

The report explains that lower-income wage-earners “are easy marks in an era when IRS increasingly relies upon correspondence audits yet doesn’t have the resources to assist taxpayers or answer their questions.” 

While the chance of a millionaire being audited increased to 2.8% last year, this still left nearly 700,000 millionaires who escaped scrutiny. 

TRAC obtained the IRS data following a court order under the Freedom of Information Act which forced the agency to submit monthly management reports to the university.

In January last year, a new law took effect requiring all e-commerce and digital platforms like eBay and Venmo to report individuals who receive over $600 per year in commercial transactions.