The biggest lie of the midterm election, embraced by almost 300 Republican candidates, is that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump.
The runner-up is the lie, running on countless television commercials and campaign charges, that Democrats plan to send 87,000 armed IRS agents to harass middle-class Americans and mom-and-pop small businesses.
That’s 180 degrees wrong. As part of the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, $80 billion was authorized for the IRS over 10 years. This is a resource-starved agency: There are 20 percent fewer personnel at the IRS than a decade ago, a sharp cutback in the ability to answer taxpayer questions, a general counsel’s office that’s smaller than any time in the last quarter-century. At the same time, there are 15 million more tax returns.
There may be something like 87,000 new employees. Some will replace retiring or departing employees; others will be in human resources or on the legal team or IT specialists to modernize antiquated technology. Yes, there will be more audits — predominantly of wealthy individuals and corporations — because audits have been scaled back.
That doesn’t square with the Republican talking points.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (R) charges that 87,000 new agents will be more than the entire 81,000 British army. (Not only is the 87,000 figure made up, but the British army is a 112,000-person force, as the senator’s Intelligence Committee staff — or a Google search — could tell him.)
The scare tactics escalate.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (R) says the Democrats aren’t coming after billionaires and big companies; they’re “designed to come after small businesses and working families.”
Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley (R) warns of a “strike force that goes in with AK-15s already loaded, ready to shoot some small-business person in Iowa.”
It’d be a family attack, warns GOP national chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel — the Democrats may “send the IRS ‘SWAT team’ after your kids’ lemonade stand.”
California Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R) vows that if the party takes over the House, the first bill will be to repeal this legislation.
Independent fact-checkers revealed these as gross misrepresentations. It’s unclear exactly how the new money would be allocated. One clear priority will be to beef up customer service so the public — those without high-priced accountants and lawyers — can get questions answered.
Another priority will be to replace an estimated 30,000 to 50,000 agents who’ll retire of leave over the decade. There will be more agents, but their targets won’t be Iowa farmers or middle-class law enforcement families and their kids.
The IRS will target the rich for the same reason Willie Sutton gave when asked why he robbed banks: That’s where the money is.
John Koskinen, a former businessman and celebrated public official who was IRS commissioner in the last years of the Obama presidency and first year of Trump, explained, “The audit rate for upper income taxpayers has dropped more than in half; these are the people who — with lawyers and accountants — can see where the IRS doesn’t have enough resources, and that’s where they push the envelope.”
You also don’t have to be a tax expert to know there’s more cheating among upper-income individuals and partnerships, as there’s more at stake and the code is more complicated.
The act projects the additional IRS resources will generate $204 billion in revenue over 10 years. (Koskinen thinks that’s too conservative, over 10 years.)
Coming overwhelmingly from the well-to-do, that’s money that ordinary taxpayers and small businesses may not have to pay. (Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has pledged that the audit rate for taxpayers making under $400,000 will not be increased.)
The duplicitous attacks are part of a long history of GOP demagoguing the tax agency. They charged the Obama administration was illegally targeting the tax status of conservative groups. There were volatile congressional hearings, wild charges and even a crazy attempt to impeach Koskinen.
It turns out there were no charges, no examples of a conservative group denied a tax status for political reasons. Koskinen was so able that even Trump kept him another year.
If there had been a scintilla of truth, you can bet it would have come out in the years of Republican control.
The current Republican effort is reminiscent of the campaign a couple decades ago to gut the estate tax by labeling it a “death tax.” Disingenuous as it was, it worked, as today, with an exemption of $23.4 million for a couple, far fewer than 1 percent of estates pay that tax.
The same Trojan horse is at play this time: The charge that socialist Democrats are coming — maybe with guns — after working-class Americans is a ruse to protect generous campaign contributors and wealthy friends.
Al Hunt is the former executive editor of Bloomberg News. He previously served as reporter, bureau chief and Washington editor for The Wall Street Journal. For almost a quarter century he wrote a column on politics for The Wall Street Journal, then The International New York Times and Bloomberg View. He hosts “Politics War Room” with James Carville. Follow him on Twitter @AlHuntDC.