The IRS has no intention of arming tax auditors, Commissioner Daniel Werfel told Congress today in an attempt to allay fears of a weaponized tax agency.
The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 granted the IRS $80 billion to hire tens of thousands of additional employees sparking fears that a horde of armed auditors would be unleashed on the American public.
“Are they going to have a strike force that goes in with AK-15s already loaded, ready to shoot some small-business person in Iowa?” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said in a televised 2022 interview.
“Stop Biden’s shadow army of 87,000 IRS agents,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) wrote on Twitter in attempt to stop the IRA from passing.
Werfel addressed the matter directly in response to a question by Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), ranking member of the House Ways and Means Committee, during an April 27 hearing.
“With the additional money from the IRA, how many armed revenue agents will be hired?” Neal asked.
“None, Sir,” Werfel said.
“Does the IRS plan to hire 87,000 revenue agents to carry guns to audit families and small businesses?” Neal asked.
“We do not,” Werfel said.
The commissioner later clarified that 3 percent of IRS agents are armed. These are law enforcement officers in the Criminal Investigation Division, not auditors.
“They are investigating acute issues of fraud and tax evasion,” Werfel said. “Typically, they’re armed when they’re putting themselves in danger.”
The IRS plans to increase the number of officers in that division by 1,200 over the next 5 years, Werfel said.
The IRS plans to stagger hiring of the 87,000 new hires over 10 years, according to Werfel, but a large number will be added over the next few years due to employee attrition and historically low staffing levels.
By the end of next year, 16,000 IRS employees are expected to retire, Werfel said.
The agency also plans to add more auditors, accountants, lawyers, and data scientists to deal with the increasingly complex tax returns of wealthy individuals and large corporations, which can be tens of thousands of pages in length.
“Today we have 2,600 IRS employees that are responsible for assessing the most wealthy filers. That’s individuals, large corporations, and complex partnerships. There are roughly 390,000 of these wealthy taxpayers,” Werfel said.
That includes individuals with $10 million or more in assets and corporations with $250 million or more in assets.
Because of the rise in the number of wealthy filers and the diminished staffing of the agency, audit levels for these filers are at an all-time low, according to Werfel.
Additional staffing will be focused on correcting that imbalance over several years.
“We are not increasing audit rates for hardworking taxpayers making under $400,000. That is my pledge,” Werfel told the committee.
“There is no new surge of audits coming for workers, retirees, and others. We have plenty of other areas we need to focus on.”
