President Joe Biden’s plan to beef up IRS enforcement and snoop on Americans’ bank accounts will require hiring more than 80,000 additional tax cops—expanding a federal bureaucracy with a long track record of flouting due process and undermining privacy.
As part of Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan, the IRS would get $80 billion in additional funding over the next 10 years. The bulk of those new funds, nearly $45 billion, would be directed toward enforcement actions with the goal of doubling the number of annual audits of small businesses. By comparison, the bill spends a relatively meager $1.93 billion on improving taxpayer services, including education and filing assistance.
In short, for every new dollar the IRS will spend helping Americans understand the endlessly complicated federal tax code, the agency will spend roughly $23 new dollars on enforcing those same rules.
Everyone should pay the taxes they owe, of course, but the IRS’ track record suggests that more enforcement will also mean more trampling of Americans’ due process rights.
“It’s a systematic practice at the IRS to violate due process and to abuse taxpayers,” says Isabelle Morales, a policy specialist for Americans for Tax Reform, a conservative nonprofit that opposes tax increases. Biden is proposing to boost funding “for an agency that needs reform,” Morales tells Reason, “and that will only lead to us fueling their bad practices.”
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