And even with tax season nearing its height, Republicans on Capitol Hill are quietly urging Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency — or DOGE — to cut even further from the beleaguered IRS.
“So I want more. We ought to open the books and say, ‘Hey, let’s be fair with this,’” Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) told Raw Story. “Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. The whole thing about businesses, you have to reevaluate all the time. So what you have today is not tomorrow.”
In the last Congress, Gosar accused former President Joe Biden of hiring new IRS agents to “harass, insult, threaten and audit families and small businesses.”
While Gosar is a member of the far-right Freedom Caucus, he’s barely an outlier on this issue that has united the right, literally, for the last two elections.
Rather than relenting and seeking to recoup tens of billions of dollars from tax evaders, the GOP’s doubling down on its rhetoric, which critics fear will have repercussions for years to come.
“I don't look at them as really a friend to anybody”
In January 2023, after Republicans were swept back into power in the House of Representatives, one of the first measures Speaker Kevin McCarthy brought to the House floor stripped the IRS of some $70 billion that Biden and Democrats had earmarked for hiring 87,000 new agents.
Not a single Democrat crossed party lines. Every single House Republican supported it and sent the measure — technically, the Family and Small Business Taxpayer Protection Act — to the Senate where it died.
While that formal IRS overhaul never went anywhere, Republicans are now rejoicing as Musk and Trump carry out the party’s collective campaign promise to gut the agency tasked with collecting the nation’s taxes.
“I don't look at them as really a friend to anybody,” Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-CA) told Raw Story. “Yes, they're a revenue source, but people are supposed to pay their taxes, they don't need to be made into criminals doing it.”
Last year, the IRS reported the nation’s wealthiest — the millionaire and billionaire class — evaded paying upwards of $150 billion in tax obligations, which the agency said infused an essential “lack of fairness” into America’s tax system.
“Are you worried that the government will lose a bunch of potential revenue because there are less agents doing audits?” Raw Story asked.
“No, I'm not worried about that,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) said through a smile.
Like many in Trump’s wealthy cabinet, Johnson is worth an estimated $54.6 million from his time as CEO of a polyester and plastics manufacturer in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.
“I don't want to get into the specifics, but no, we have to dramatically reduce the size, scope and cost of government. So, you know, times are changing. There's a new sheriff in town,” Johnson said. “Democrats look at government as the way they fund their radical left ideology. They don't want that exposed, okay?”
“The wealthy…aren't paying their taxes as they should”
Ultimately, Biden was only able to hire some 15,000 new IRS employees — including roughly 5,000 dedicated to collections and audits — in the last two years of his administration.
Many of those workers were the ones Musk just shoved out, because they were still stuck in probationary limbo.
But they were also effective. In fiscal year 2023, according to data from the IRS and National Taxpayer Advocate, the federal government raked in $4.7 trillion in tax revenue, which shot up to $5.1 trillion the following year.
That has Democrats worried.
“Do you think people are going to start to really feel it when it becomes, you know, tax season and just having 6,000 IRS employees gone?” Raw Story asked the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee.
“I don't see how that wouldn't be the case,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) told Raw Story. “Now we'll see what they try to do to move people in at the last minute and the like, but it’s a big number. I don't see how that doesn’t become an impediment to services.”
The cuts to services “particularly can benefit the wealthy who aren't paying their taxes as they should,” Wyden said.
“The wealthy have more complicated returns and you need staff to root it out,” Wyden said. “The working person — who essentially pays taxes with every paycheck — the government has that money and that information.”
“Fort Knox of personal information”
It’s not just the number of employees at the IRS. Many Democrats are worried about what’s happening behind the scenes with Americans' sensitive personal information now that DOGE has been let loose on American taxpayer’s returns.
“Obviously, we want to know about all the data stuff, because people are concerned about that, you know, this is Fort Knox of personal information,” Wyden said. “They want to know what's happening to it.”
Republicans on Capitol Hill are letting Musk and DOGE play with fire, according to the top Democrat on the House tax writing committee — formally, the Ways and Means Committee. But it’s the American people who may soon find themselves burned.
“They're reckless,” Rep. Richard Neal (D-MA) told Raw Story. “And the worst part about it is that we're in the filing season.”
Moreso, Neal and other Democrats wonder what happened to the notion of taxpayer patriotism which got America through WWII and other conflicts over the centuries. These days, on the right, it seems tax avoidance is rewarded or, at the very least, more cherished than those of us who chip in our fair share, the suggested.
Trump’s IRS chief asked for the 87,000 new agents
Neal fears DOGE’s indiscriminate cuts include newly hired IT and artificial intelligence staffers who are supposed to be the bridge to a new, less burdensome tax future.
“Everybody should be able to agree on the role that compliance plays in a representative democracy. The upgrade there is going to have to be with personnel, people that actually answer the phones so you can get an answer, and also to embrace the investment we made in technology and what artificial intelligence is going to do,” Neal told Raw Story. “We shouldn't be retreating on this front.”
Democrats also don’t want you to forget that the IRS commissioner who requested the 87,000 new hires during the Biden administration, Charles Rettig, was a Trump appointee.
“Always remember this,” Neal said. “It was the Republican IRS commissioner, Rettig, who asked for the money.”
