WSJ: IRS Expansion to Collect Billions from Middle-Class Audits

WSJ: IRS Expansion to Collect Billions from Middle-Class Audits

Lower- and middle-income earning Americans are the primary target in the IRS expansion in Democrats' Manchin-Biden bill, which will unleash 87,000 new agents to increase audits on American taxpayers.

New analysisfrom the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office confirms at least$20 billion of the revenue Democrats hope to collect from taxpayers will come from lower- and middle- income earners and small businesses.

Fromthe Wall Street Journaleditorial board:

• "If the IRS expansion plan 'is not about folks who make less than $400,000,' as White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre claimed, why not make that clear in the bill? [Senate Finance Republican Leader] Senator Mike Crapo (R-ID) proposed an amendment to ensure new audits would exclude taxpayers earning less than $400,000, but Democrats voted it down 51 to 50.

• "Mr. Crapo then asked the CBO to calculate the effect his amendment would have had. The agency found that increased scrutiny on filers earning less than $400,000 would account for $20 billion over 10 years, out of a total of about $204 billion that Democrats hope to collect through a bigger, badder IRS. In other words, the IRS expansion as it's currently designed could collect billions in revenue from new middle-class audits."

CLICK HEREto read the full editorial.

READ: CBO: New IRS Audits Will Grab at Least $20B from Lower- and Middle-Income Families

Background:

• President Biden has repeatedly tried to mislead the public about his dangerous IRS expansion by claiming that audit rates will not rise for households making less than $400,000 "relevant to recent years," but a Congressional Budget Office analysismakes clear that under this plan, audit rates will "rise for all taxpayers" and the policy "would return audit rates to the levels of about 10 years ago." That was when audit rates for the middle class were at historic eyes.
• The Joint Committee on Taxation, Congress's official tax scorekeeper, confirms that from 78 percent to 90 percent of the money raised from under-reported income would likely come from those making less than $200,000 a year. Only 4 percent to 9 percent would come from those making more than $500,000.
• Democrats voted against guardrails preventing audits for middle-income earners, instead using non-binding legislative language that would do nothing to protect taxpayers from agency abuse.

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