Peach Tree Times

The Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 has recently been accused of being a mislabeled "reckless tax-and-spending bill” as Senator Raphael Warnock (D-GA) voted last week to authorize $80 billion in funding for the IRS.

According to the Associated Press, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 contains $80 billion – or more than six times the current IRS budget – that President Joe Biden plans to use to hire new IRS agents. This plan has been in the works and is due in part to the expected amount of IRS employees retiring from and quitting their jobs in the coming years.

"The IRS absolutely targets lower-income taxpayers for audits, in my opinion," Benjamin Wilkerson, an attorney at North Mississippi Rural Legal Services (NMRLS), told Just the News.

An analysis by Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) confirmed Wilkerson’s suspicion, finding that "low-income wage earners with less than $25,000 in total earnings were audited at a rate five times higher than everyone else in fiscal year 2021."

This comes as U.S. Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Mike Crapo (R-ID) filed an amendment to the bill. His amendment would prevent the IRS from using any of the supersized $80 billion of funding for audits on “hard-working American taxpayers” with taxable incomes lower than $400,000, including both individuals and small businesses.

Senate Democrats, including Warnock, voted the amendment down along party lines, 50-50.

According to a report from May by the Government Accountability Office, while audits decreased for Americans of all income levels from 2010 through 2019, audit rates for taxpayers with incomes of $200,000 and above declined the most, Just the News reports.

While IRS officials said this trend was the result of reduced staffing due to decreased funding, it has also been said that lower-income audits are generally less complex and more automated so they can still be conducted even with fewer staff.

“The reality is a significant portion raised from their IRS funding bloat would come from taxpayers with income below $400,000,” Crapo said in a recent press release, the Free Press reports. “My colleagues and Americans know the real answer: small business owners, cash-heavy businesses and those who can’t afford legal teams are easy targets for the new IRS agents and their audits.”

Among comments, Crapo added that Americans can expect "more taxes, more spending, higher prices and an army of IRS auditors" from the Inflation Reduction Act.