The extra half billion in our nation’s coffers is thanks to President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. That act gave money to the IRS to go after wealthy tax cheats.
From HuffPost:
Using new funding earmarked for the IRS to target wealthy and corporate tax cheats, the IRS since mid-2022 has collected more than $520 million from about 1,600 households with income of more than $1 million and that are known to have unpaid tax bills of more than $250,000.
MAGA Republicans hate this good news for the country and President Joe Biden and seem willing to tank the economy and/or shut down the government to stop it.
Last year, a deal between Biden and former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to raise the debt ceiling slashed enforcement funding by $20 billion to $24.2 billion. Now, a new debt ceiling deal between Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) reportedly speeds up those cuts.
Aside from millionaire tax holdouts, the agency is cracking down on a range of fishy corporate structures that ultrawealthy individuals, hedge funds, large law firms and multinational companies often deploy to avoid reporting taxable income and transactions.
According to IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel, a sped-up claw-back of the $20 billion wouldn’t affect the IRS’s upgrades and crackdown until later in the decade, MarketWatch reported. But a government shutdown during the middle of tax season would be “highly disruptive,” Werfel said.
Sadly, disrupting and “deconstructing” government functions are exactly what MAGA Republicans want to do.
