Few differences between Democrats and Republicans are sharper than their approaches to the Internal Revenue Service. Republicans believe the IRS’s priorities should be fairly administering the law and keeping Americans’ interactions with the agency simple and few, which was a central achievement of our 2017 tax-reform law. Democrats seem to value revenue above efficiency or accountability and are intent on creating a far bigger and more intrusive enforcement-focused agency. With the narrowest of majorities they have implemented radical changes to the IRS while refusing to provide accountability and oversight. If Republican majorities take Congress, that will change.
Like the Obama IRS, President Biden’s has been marked by political bias, management failure and a lack of accountability. These pages have called attention to last year’s massive breach of taxpayer privacy, when personal data ended up in the hands of the left-leaning news site ProPublica. It’s been nearly 17 months since that improper disclosure was used by ProPublica, as well as the administration and Democrats in Congress, to advance a wish list of liberal tax policies. Yet there has been no accountability for the breach or demand for answers from Democrats in power. At best, that’s a reckless lack of oversight; at worst, it condones an outrageous violation of America’s privacy rights.
If the GOP takes the Senate in the midterm elections, that won’t stand. Using the chamber’s committee gavels, we will hold hearings, investigate wrongdoing, and bring administration officials before Congress to provide answers to the American people. There will be no more sidestepping accountability.
We won’t stop with the data breach. A Republican majority would make sure that IRS reform focuses first on the treatment of taxpayers, at which it is notoriously terrible. In 2021 the agency answered 11% of the 282 million phone calls it received. Yet less than 5% of the $80 billion Democrats gave to the IRS in the Inflation Reduction Act was dedicated to improving customer service. Instead, the bill, passed along party lines, prioritized squeezing more…
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