Up to $275 million in funding for the Internal Revenue Service may be cut as part of the negotiations underway centering on the Biden Administration’s pending $1.7 billion omnibus budget.
Members of the U.S. Senate are pushing for a fiscal year reduction for the IRS, while still allocating just over $12.3 billion for agency. That figure is a reduction from the $12.6 the IRS received last fiscal year.
The move comes weeks after the successful passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, which included $80 billion in additional funding for the IRS over the course of the next ten years.
That $80 billion increase has partly allowed the IRS to hire new workers, up to 8,000 of which are revenue agents tasked with auditing tax filings.
The funding has also been relegated to taxpayer services, operations, and technology at the IRS. According to the Congressional Budget Office, IRS systems improvements are slated to bring in just under $204 billion in revenue between now and 2031.
Congressional analysts say they expect to see increased legislative actions relating to the IRS beginning next year—an offshoot of the November mid-term elections.
“With Republicans taking control of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee,” notes The Hill newspaper, oversight of the IRS budget “is certain to get extra scrutiny in committee hearings over the course of 2023.”
By Garry Boulard
