New IRS funding will be used to target the Middle Class, causing inequality

On Thursday, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (MO-08) issued the following statement in response to the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) newly released “plan” that was supposed to inform Congress and the American people how the IRS will spend the $80 billion Democrats gave the agency in the Inflation Reduction Act (it doesn’t): “Americans are rightly concerned the IRS will use its $80 billion pay raise to go after the middle class, and today’s announcement does nothing to ease those concerns. The American people deserve to know how their hard-earned taxpayer dollars are being spent. More than eight months after Democrats enacted the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, the IRS’s latest document offers no specifics for the agency over the next decade. If this is a ‘plan,’ why does it omit how many employees the agency seeks to hire over ten years, fail to identify target audit rates for taxpayers, and lack specific details about how the money will be spent beyond the next two years? The $80 billion raise is just the start. The Biden Administration had the nerve to ask Congress to give the IRS another $43 billion in its annual budget request while withholding details on how it will spend the new money. This is a punt, not a ‘plan,’ and it raises more questions than answers about how Americans’ tax dollars will be spent to go after working families and small businesses.”