WASHINGTON – House Republicans say they’re one step closer to defunding the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) after passing a bill that would cut tens of billions of dollars in funding for the agency.

What You Need To Know

  • Monday, House Republicans passed the Family and Small Business Taxpayer Protection Act that would roll back nearly $80 billion appropriated for the IRS in the Inflation Reduction Act 

  • Republicans argue the agency wants to add 87,000 new enforcement agents but former IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig debunked that claim in an op-ed, saying it is flat out wrong  

  • Rettig warned the tax collection service could lose around 50,000 agents over the next five years due to retirements 

The House approved legislation aimed at blocking nearly $80 billion in new appropriations over ten years for the agency. Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Cali., announced the party’s intent to move the bill quickly through the chamber during his first speech after winning House Speaker.

“Our very first bill will repeal the funding for 87,000 new IRS agents,” McCarthy said.

Former IRS commissioner John Koskinen called the measure a “political show.” With Democrats in control of the Senate and White House, there’s no pathway for the bill to become law. 

“But it is consistent with the fact that Republicans have tried to under-fund the agency, successfully actually, for the last 12 years,” Koskinen told Spectrum News. “When I was commissioner from 2013-2017, because of the underfunding, we went from 100,000 employees to 80,000. And there are now about 77,000. So that means that the IRS has become much less efficient across the board. And the people that affects the most are taxpayers.”

Democrats approved $79.6 billion in appropriation for the IRS last year in the Inflation Reduction Act. The extra money is supposed to improve the tax collection service’s operations and allow the agency to go after high-income individuals and corporations. Democrats say the increase in revenue would generate billions of dollars to cover environmental and health care programs included in the bill. But Republicans believe the improvement in operations would target average folks.

“I think it’s important to pull that back to make sure that we’re not having and allowing the IRS to go after an attack everyday Americans who are struggling already under inflation,” Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Wis., said.

They’re arguing the agency wants to add 87,000 new enforcement agents. But former IRS head Charles Rettig debunked that claim in an op-ed, saying it is flat out wrong. Koskinen​ says their attempts to defund the IRS are only deteriorating vital services for Americans.

“Last filing season, 11% of calls went through,” Koskinen said. “So people who had questions or needed help, simply couldn’t get through to the IRS, not to say the IRS doesn’t care, but because there just weren’t enough people to answer the phone because there wasn’t enough money to pay them.”

Besides paying for customer service staff, the $80 billion would also be used to fill many vacancies and replace tens of thousands of agents expected to retire.

“I think the agency struggles because we continue to ask it to do more and more, without giving it the resources to do more and more,” Bob Kerr, a former IRS program analyst and investigator with the Senate Finance Committee, told Spectrum News.

Kerr says defunding isn’t the answer to addressing lawmakers’ concerns. They should instead work to make the agency more transparent.

“From my perspective, there’s certainly space for Congress to say ‘we’d like you to do more of A and less of B’,” he said. “Let the IRS figure out what it is going to do with those parameters. And if those aren’t the right parameters, I think [Capitol Hill] has its place to say, ‘well, you know, we want these other parameters too.’”