LETTER: IRS employee targeting simply fear mongering

To the editor:

We all want fairness. Payment of income taxes should be no different.

On Aug. 16, 2022, the Inflation Reduction Act was signed into law by President Joe Biden. Included in this law is nearly $80 billion in funding for the Internal Revenue Service over the next 10 years, of which $45.6 billion is for “enforcement.”

The reasoning behind this substantial increased investment in enforcement was to help make the tax code fairer, by focusing on the wealthiest individuals and corporations that currently work the system to pay little or no taxes. According to the numbers by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the Inflation Reduction Act will generate $124 billion in savings by collecting the taxes already owed by wealthy people and large corporations.

Of course, the Republicans now in office in 2023 are offering “an alternative fact” false conspiracy theory that this law is actually a deep-state operation to employ 87,000 new tax collectors to target hard-working middle class Americans.

When 87,000 additional IRS agents are mentioned in the law, it is in reference to a May 2021 estimate from the Treasury Department of the total number of employees (not just auditors) that the IRS proposes to hire over the next 10 years. Most importantly, the scrutiny of any additional auditing resources will be to finally focus some attention on the wealthiest Americans and businesses that skirt the laws — not the working families, as Republicans want everyone to believe.

Case in point, Donald Trump and his Trump Organization. Despite promising to release his tax returns since he first ran for office starting in 2015, Trump never did. As the public can now see, Trump used questionable or poorly substantiated deductions and a number of other tax avoidance schemes as justification to pay little or no federal income tax. So, how does a “billionaire” pay zero in taxes?

The fact is, and everyone knows it, our tax laws are often inequitable, and enforcement of them is often unjust. Republicans fear mongering middle class taxpayers only serves to deflect attention away from the rich and powerful. In no way are Republicans offering an alternate solution to anything. If these new Republicans get their way, the middle class will continue to get stuck with the financial burden of funding the nation, and rich people and corporations would continue to get off the hook.

Mary Arnold, Shawano