IRS and allies downplay importance of hiring 87,000 individuals, says Heritage Foundation

The legislative bill known as the Inflation Reduction Act will grant an additional $80 billion to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to help the agency fight tax evasion by hiring a substantial number of staff.

The proposal, signed into law by President Joe Biden earlier this month, would add about 87,000 new employees to the U.S. tax collection agency, doubling its current staff numbers. However, this bill is not appealing to most Americans, the Heritage Foundation found.

According to Heritage, the bill's approval "revived stories of IRS harassment," as well as "the political instrumentalization of the agency" by presidential administrations from Richard Nixon to Barack Obama, as well as the "inexplicable leak of taxpayer data that was used for political purposes just a year ago."

The IRS would be downplaying the magnitude of the support they are receiving by passing it off as a moderate increase in IRS staffing.

"There's a big wave of attrition coming, and a lot of these resources are just to fill those positions," said a Treasury Department tax policy advisor, quoted by Times. 

The 24-page IRS report describes the expansion of its workforce as part of a budget modification that "occurs gradually over a 10-year horizon, each year the IRS workforce should grow by no more than a manageable 15%."

However, Heritage Foundation is questioning this data, claiming that "if the IRS were to grow by 15% each year for nine years, that would mean a 252% increase in the size of the current workforce" of 81,836 people. That would mean having more than 206,000 IRS employees today, the organization noted. 

Heritage promotes "public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual liberty, traditional American values, and a strong national defense," according to their official website.