Opinion | Why the GOP Made a Mistake Killing Off Biden’s IRS Plan

Charles Rossotti served as IRS commissioner in the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations.

But as former top IRS officials for Republican presidents, we think Republicans are getting something wrong here. This IRS expansion was based on a smart idea, which could also be good politics and serve the interests of both parties: Not more audits, but better technology and income tracking to catch wealthy cheaters.

Biden’s idea for strengthening the IRS wasn’t to add audits, but to improve technology — which is a smart use of federal money to bring in revenue. When we were at the IRS, audits were pretty much the only tool we had to find most of that missing income. But it was and is an inefficient tool. While there is an essential role for audits, they bring in less than 0.5 percent of IRS revenue, and 20 to 40 percent of audits produce nothing.

Over the last 10 years, the IRS has been crippled by funding cuts, growth in quantity and complexity of tax returns, staff losses and the complex process of distributing Covid relief. The Biden plan calls for a steady and manageable increase of 6 percent per year above inflation in new funding over 10 years, which should improve services for ordinary taxpayers.

Modern software technology, such as that used to detect credit card fraud, would allow the IRS to analyze all the information it has, including the increased financial account reporting noted above, other information reports such as income on foreign accounts and income from businesses organized as partnerships, and results of past audits, to pinpoint returns with possible deficiencies. Currently, the IRS cannot use this information except in a laborious manual audit.

Agreed. And this comes from REPUBLICANS who served under Presidents Bush and Clinton in the IRS. I Believe it’s because: 1) Perhaps the GOP of today are so busy gathering $ themselves that they make that mark and don’t WANT the Technology you speak of checking into whether or…

😂😂😂

Excellent article. GOP strategy is to depend on little people thinking they were being protected from 'IRS tyranny' (nobody likes the IRS as long as they collect money). As always, it is to protect rich GOP donors from paying their taxes.

Let's be honest, if the plan makes sense, the GOP won't support it. 🙄

The GQP likes to spend a dollar to save a dime. They are more interested in finding and prosecuting welfare cheats rather than than tax cheats even if the money collected from one tax cheat could bring more to the treasury that what they could get from a hundred welfare cheats.

On a related topic, has Janet Yellen handed over Trump tax returns to Congress yet? If not, why not?

POTUS IRS Get the message?

They’ve made it clear that they won’t support anything this administration wants to put through. No matter how much it would benefit us all.

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