Among other ridiculous special interests awarded taxpayer dollars in the Senate-passed "Inflation Reduction Act" — which would be accurately described by Senator John Kennedy as a "pork orgy" — is a significant investment in the Internal Revenue Service.
Put aside, for now, the fact that the "Inflation Reduction Act" doesn't reduce inflation and only raises taxes on Americans while throwing wheelbarrows of taxpayer funds into radical alternative energy projects and the woke-ification of the federal bureaucracy. The nonsense of supposedly "clean" alternative energy, while wasteful and annoying, will also negatively affect things like America's power grid.
But the massive expansion of the IRS — including the hiring of 86,852 new agents — means intensive bureaucratic intrusion is coming for Americans, and Biden is ensuring they're not coming unprepared.
For perspective, IRS workforce data for FY2021 states that it "used 78,661 full-time equivalent (FTE) positions in conducting its work." And Democrats are adding more than 85,000 new agents. As with any other bureaucratic cesspools, more bureaucrats only make things worse, increasing the likelihood of rogue employees and corruption and making coverups easier. Remember the IRS' targeting of conservative organizations? Joe Biden doesn't want you to.
What kinds of positions will the IRS be filling to roughly double its workforce and thereby double the number of audits it's able to conduct each year? Clues are available from current openings advertised on the IRS Careers website that promises new hires the opportunity to work with "a worthwhile mission" as part of "service to the country you love."
The 85,000+ positions that will be filled are more than just number crunchers sitting in dimly lit federal office buildings, too. One such position currently available is "IRS Criminal Investigation Special Agent" tasked with "investigating potential criminal violations of the Internal Revenue Code, and related financial crimes, in a manner that fosters confidence in the tax system and compliance with the law" and promises successful candidates the opportunity to "combine your accounting skills with law enforcement skills." Such a position calls for arming agents with more than a calculator. As the job posting explains of the necessary qualifications, candidates must be a U.S. citizen between the ages of 21 and 37, have a driver's license, pass a background check and drug test, and… "be legally allowed to carry a firearm." It seems any federal employee should be free of a background that would prevent them from legally carrying a firearm, but I digress.
Candidates for the position also must be willing to "work a minimum of 50 hours per week, which may include irregular hours, and be on-call 24/7, including holidays and weekends" and "[c]arry a firearm and be willing to use deadly force, if necessary."
So, the IRS is looking for someone willing to work more than full-time while being on call constantly and also ready to use deadly force in order to…enforce the tax code? According to the posting, "[n]o matter what the source, all income earned, both legal and illegal, has the potential of becoming involved in crimes which fall within the investigative jurisdiction of the IRS Criminal Investigation."
And, lest you think the IRS wasn't prioritizing its armed and ready-to-use deadly force agents, consider the fact that the IRS bought some $696,000 worth of ammunition for its stockpile earlier in 2022, something a spokesperson at the agency confirmed.
"But," you may say, "the doubled-in-size IRS is necessitated by all those greedy corporations and well-to-do Americans who aren't paying their fair share of taxes and the government needs the force to compel them to cough up unpaid obligations." The IRS has even insisted that it would "absolutely not" target low- or middle-income Americans. Wrong again.
Americans making more than $400,000 constitute less than two percent of U.S. taxpayers. As The Wall Street Journal pointed out in an editorial amid Biden and Democrats' push to beef up the IRS, the agency's "main targets will by necessity be the middle- and upper-middle class because that's where the money is" and "78% to 90% of the money raised from under-reported income would likely come from those making less than $200,000 a year" while just "4% to 9% would come from those making more than $500,000."
So, for those in the 98 percent of Americans making less than $400,000 per year, Biden's IRS Army is coming for you with its doubled manpower, deadly-force-ready agents, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in stockpiled ammunition. "Nothing to see here," lawmakers — a majority of which are millionaires and statistically unlikely to be pestered by the IRS — will say anyway.
Meanwhile, the actual Army is on track to miss its recruiting and retention goals. The $80 billion being taken from taxpayers to recruit, train, and arm the doubled IRS bureaucracy is a massive Democrat investment in the administrative state, the effects of which will be felt for years to come. So beware when the taxman cometh — he might be trained to use deadly force in addition to his accounting skills.
