{"id":9720,"date":"2023-01-09T22:02:05","date_gmt":"2023-01-09T22:02:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=9720"},"modified":"2023-01-09T22:02:05","modified_gmt":"2023-01-09T22:02:05","slug":"heres-why-defunding-the-irs-is-the-house-gops-first-priority","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=9720","title":{"rendered":"Here\u2019s why defunding the IRS is the House GOP\u2019s first priority"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\n“The House GOP’s first bill out of the gate<\/a> doesn\u2019t address inflation or gas prices or immigration, but instead zeroes in on the Internal Revenue Service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bill set to be voted on Monday evening \u2014 barring a stalemate over approving the rules for the 118th Congress \u2014 would reverse much of the $80 billion in extra funding set aside for the agency by 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While it has little chance of being enacted with Democrats in control of the Senate, the prominence of the issue shows just how much the IRS has become a target of Republicans even though experts say the funds in question would go toward more prosaic concerns like helping the agency chase down tax cheats<\/a> and refresh its shockingly outdated technology<\/a>.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The claim from McCarthy, which has been echoed by many Republicans, is that the influx of money will lead to a flood of 87,000 new IRS agents who will then harass everyday Americans. Some critics of the agency go even further and claim these new agents will be armed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But fact-checkers have repeatedly debunked<\/a> the claims<\/a>, and the agency itself pushed back in a Yahoo Finance op-ed from then-IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig<\/a> in August.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The viral claims are \u201cabsolutely false,\u201d Rettig wrote at the time, adding his agency \u201cis often perceived as an easy target for mischaracterizations,\u201d but he promised the new money will not lead to increased audit scrutiny on households making under $400,000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The plan is instead for much of the money to go toward wealthy tax cheats. IRS estimates<\/a> of the so-called \u201ctax gap\u201d \u2014 the difference between what taxes are owed to the government and what is actually paid \u2014 is hundreds of billions of dollars a year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Much of the $80 billion will be focused on taking a bite out of the gap, focusing on wealthy tax payers. The investment is projected to pay for itself and then bring in over $100 billion in increased tax revenue over the coming decade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition, a May 2021 report by the Department of Treasury <\/a>estimated that more IRS funding could lead to 86,852 new employees, but many of those new employees would not be agents. Many would work in other areas like information technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And nearly all new agents would be unarmed.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.yahoo.com\/finance\/news\/heres-why-defunding-the-irs-is-the-house-go-ps-first-priority-184720242.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“The House GOP’s first bill out of the gate doesn\u2019t address inflation or gas prices or immigration, but instead zeroes in on the Internal Revenue Service.
\nThe bill set to be voted on Monday evening \u2014 barring a stalemate over approving the rules for the 118th Congress \u2014 would reverse much of the $80 billion in extra funding set aside for the agency by 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act.<\/p>\n

While it has little chance of being enacted with Democrats in control of the Senate, the prominence of the issue shows just how much the IRS has become a target of Republicans even though experts say the funds in question would go toward more prosaic concerns like helping the agency chase down tax cheats and refresh its shockingly outdated technology.”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“The claim from McCarthy, which has been echoed by many Republicans, is that the influx of money will lead to a flood of 87,000 new IRS agents who will then harass everyday Americans. Some critics of the agency go even further and claim these new agents will be armed.<\/p>\n

But fact-checkers have repeatedly debunked the claims, and the agency itself pushed back in a Yahoo Finance op-ed from then-IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig in August.<\/p>\n

The viral claims are \u201cabsolutely false,\u201d Rettig wrote at the time, adding his agency \u201cis often perceived as an easy target for mischaracterizations,\u201d but he promised the new money will not lead to increased audit scrutiny on households making under $400,000.<\/p>\n

The plan is instead for much of the money to go toward wealthy tax cheats. IRS estimates of the so-called \u201ctax gap\u201d \u2014 the difference between what taxes are owed to the government and what is actually paid \u2014 is hundreds of billions of dollars a year.<\/p>\n

Much of the $80 billion will be focused on taking a bite out of the gap, focusing on wealthy tax payers. The investment is projected to pay for itself and then bring in over $100 billion in increased tax revenue over the coming decade.<\/p>\n

In addition, a May 2021 report by the Department of Treasury estimated that more IRS funding could lead to 86,852 new employees, but many of those new employees would not be agents. Many would work in other areas like information technology.<\/p>\n

And nearly all new agents would be unarmed.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[542,1303,506,140,1639,141],"class_list":["post-9720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-congress","tag-irs","tag-republicans","tag-tax","tag-tax-avoidance","tag-taxes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9720"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9721,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9720\/revisions\/9721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}