Republicans could be a tough audience for IRS enforcement funding next year
Lawmakers weren't in a giving mood toward the taxman as they passed a bill over the weekend to avert a government shutdown before the holidays.
Over $20 billion dollars meant to strengthen the Internal Revenue Service's long-term enforcement efforts remains frozen and inaccessible as a result of the legislation President Joe Biden signed Saturday.
Extra money for tax compliance, with a goal of carrying out more audits for wealthy households and businesses, has been the subject of a back-and-forth between lawmakers since 2022, when the IRS was allocated more funding through the Inflation Reduction Act.
The bill that was passed over the weekend funds the federal government at its current levels through March 14. The next chance to unfreeze the extra IRS funding will occur next year, and it's going to face a tough audience with Donald Trump in the White House and Republicans holding majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Trump's transition team has pledged to end what it calls "bureaucratic overstepping" at the IRS, and congressional Republicans have been skeptical of the agency's multibillion-dollar funding windfall ever since Democrats authorized it more than two years ago.
The $20.2 billion at issue is part of a pot of money aimed at revamping the IRS under the Inflation Reduction Act. The tax and climate package devoted an extra $80 billion to the IRS to toughen tax compliance and audit rates while also improving customer service and IRS technology.
The funding was reduced to approximately $60 billion after negotiations on raising the debt ceiling in 2023. The $20.2 billion became inaccessible through quirks of budget wording and negotiations in previous bills to keep the government funded.
So far the IRS has barely touched any of the money allotted for tougher enforcement under the IRA. If the $20.2 billion stays out of reach for good, it would effectively wipe out the extra enforcement funding the agency was still supposed to receive through the IRA.
The IRS has tried to highlight early enforcement results from the money it has been able to use, including over $1 billion in back taxes collected from delinquent millionaires.
A Treasury Department spokesperson on Monday confirmed that the $20.2 billion in funding remained frozen.
Without the extra enforcement money, Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said last month there could be "a dramatic fall-off" in the agency's ability to carry out duties like collecting all the taxes owed by rich households and businesses that didn't pay up.
He pointed to IRS estimates that there would be 8,000 fewer audits of wealthy taxpayers and businesses though 2029 without the sidelined $20.2 billion.
The ongoing freeze is "not the final word" on the money, given the budget process, said Joe Bishop-Henchman, executive vice president of the National Taxpayers Union Foundation, a right-leaning organization.
But Adeyemo "was doing a full-court press on this because he understood this was the last chance politically to get the funding back to the IRS," Bishop-Henchman said.
Amid the Capitol Hill plot twists last week, organizations pushing for tougher tax enforcement said it was a critical moment.
Democrats should have insisted on the $20 billion in the deal, Morris Pearl, chair of a nonprofit called Patriotic Millionaires, said last week.
"The American people might just conclude that both parties agree that the wealthy should just decide for themselves how much taxes to send in, rather than being held to the same standard as ordinary Americans who actually work for a living and have taxes deducted from their paychecks every week," Pearl said last Wednesday.
There are two general views on how tough the IRS should be, Bishop-Henchman said Monday.
One view is that "it's all enforcement, all the time," he said, while the other school of thought is that "the IRS should primarily be a customer-service enterprise, that most mistakes are mistakes and the way you resolve them is through clarity and good customer-service tools."
That's a widely shared view among Republicans, and for that reason Bishop-Henchman said that looking ahead to next year, he expected less funding for IRS enforcement.
The Trump transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
-Andrew Keshner
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