Hooray! Everybody is getting more money in the 2018 spending bill. Well, almost everybody:
This comes from Emily Horton of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, who says this:
Policymakers need to recognize the depth of the IRS’s budget and workforce depletion, as well as the multi-year and multi-dimensional nature of the response required to successfully implement and enforce the new tax law. Rather than continue squeezing the agency’s funding, policymakers should give the IRS sufficient resources to perform its core functions of collecting revenues and enforcing the nation’s tax laws.
Unfortunately, our current policymakers do recognize the depth of the IRS’s workforce depletion. In fact, cutting their budget is designed to deplete their workforce. Why? Because our current policymakers are Republicans, and Republicans don’t want the IRS to perform its core function of enforcing the nation’s tax laws. After all, that would mean more audits of rich people, and that’s not something they want.
This is neither new nor a secret. Republicans have conducted a jihad against the IRS for decades, primarily because they don’t want their rich donors to be pestered with audits. It’s the next best thing to just cutting their taxes outright.
