Three former heads of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) have thrown their support behind a Democratic bill provision that would increase agency funding in a bid to catch high net worth tax evaders.
Fred Goldberg, who headed the agency under former President George H. W. Bush, joined President Bill Clinton's IRS head, Charles Rossotti, and John Koskinen, who led the IRS under the President Barack Obama administration in signing a statement supporting the new proposed legislation.
Per The Hill, the trio are concerned about the tax agency's current state, believing that it could be dramatically improved should new potential laws go into effect:
In the statement, the former commissioners bemoaned what they described as “the status quo” at the IRS, saying the agency “has shrunk to 1970s levels with technological infrastructure that is decades out-of-date and an audit rate that has dropped by 50 percent.”
A significant funding increase -- to the tune of $80 billion -- is built into the highly publicized Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. The former IRS heads believe that this would "“vastly improved services for taxpayers.”
In their lengthy statement, the three ex-commissioners also wrote:
“The sustained, multi-year funding contained in the reconciliation package is critical to help the agency rebuild. That will mean vastly improved services for taxpayers, who will be able to interact with a modernized IRS in a digital way, whose questions will be answered and issues resolved promptly and fairly, and who will find it simpler to get access to the benefits and credits to which they are entitled,” the commissioners wrote.
“It will also mean the capacity to enforce the tax laws against sophisticated taxpayers who today evade their tax obligations freely, because they know that the IRS lacks the tools it needs to pursue them,” they said. “To be sure, the vast majority of workers already pay what they owe, which is why the Administration has been clear that audit rates wouldn’t increase for families making under $400,000 annually.”
The Inflation Reduction Act, which is heavily backed by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), shockingly received support from well-known centrist Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) on July 27.
Reportedly, the key vote of Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) is still up in the air as Capitol Hill Democrats reportedly scramble to address her concerns regarding several provisions in the bill, including the carried interest loophole.
What do you think about the Inflation Reduction Act increasing IRS funding?
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