The incoming House Republican majority has made gutting IRS funding a top legislative priority, assuming they can elect a speaker and get down to business.
The first item on the House legislative schedule is consideration of the misleadingly named Family and Small Business Taxpayer Protection Act, which would repeal most of the federal agency's new funding provided by last year's Inflation Reduction Act, reported Mother Jones.
"Perhaps most importantly, it would bolster the agency’s ability to hire specialized enforcement agents — tax professionals with the expertise needed to decode the opaque and voluminous returns of sophisticated tax-avoiders like the Trumps, who have armies of tax lawyers and accountants on the payroll," the publication reported.
Last year's Democratic majority authorized $80 billion in funding over 10 years to boost enforcement of existing tax laws, modernize the agency's aging infrastructure and improve other deficiencies that allow tax cheats to skate, and Congressional Budget Office estimates the new measures would return about $204 billion on that investment in its first decade.
"With the Democrats in control of the Senate, this particular vote may be largely performative," Mother Jones reported.
But tax policy watchdogs suspect IRS funding will be used as a bargaining chip in congressional budget fights, including the looming battle of the debt ceiling.
"Republican lawmakers, in any case, seem to have a fetish for performative votes on anti-tax bills written to benefit America’s wealthiest," the publication reported, "after a Who’s Who of dynastic families spent millions lobbying for the repeal of inheritance taxes, congressional Republicans introduced no fewer than 44 bills in a decade aiming to do precisely that."
