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WASHINGTON, Jan. 10 (AP) – House Republicans began their term with a majority on Monday by passing a bill that would repeal nearly $71 billion in Congress’s handing over to the Internal Revenue Service, fulfilling a campaign deadline. commitment, although the legislation is unlikely to go any further.
Democrats strengthened the IRS over the next decade to help offset the costs of the top health and environmental priorities they passed last year and complement an agency that works hard to provide basic services to taxpayers and ensure fairness in tax compliance.
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The money exceeds what Congress provides to the IRS each year through the appropriations process and immediately became a magnet for Republican campaign ads in the fall, claiming that the increase would lead to an army of IRS agents harassing hardworking Americans.
The House of Representatives passed the bill to eliminate the money by a vote of 221-210. The Democratic-controlled Senate has vowed to ignore it.
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Shortly before the vote, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicted that eliminating additional IRS funding would add more than $114 billion to the deficit over the next decade. It came at an awkward moment for Republicans, who have been saying that fixing the deficit will be one of most people’s top concerns. It offers an early example of how the bold promises of the Republican campaign have become entangled with the messy realities of governing.
Still, the CBO projections don’t appear to have dented Republican support. RS.C. Rep. Jeff Duncan said the additional IRS funding provided by Democrats last year served a purpose.
“In pursuit of small businesses, hard-working Americans are trying to fund the reckless spending that has created $31 trillion in debt in this country,” Duncan said.
Duncan and other Republican lawmakers routinely say that the extra money will be used to hire 87,000 new agents to target Americans, but that is misleading. That figure is based on a Treasury Department plan that says many IRS workers will be hired over the next decade if the IRS gets the money. But those workers won’t be hired at the same time, and they won’t all be auditors, many of whom will replace about 50,000 employees who are expected to resign or retire in the next few years.
“This debate on the IRS itself is some of the most dishonest, most inflammatory rhetoric I’ve ever seen in Congress,” said Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md.
In his final letter to the agency in November, former IRS chief Charles Rettig said the additional funding would help in many areas, not just tax enforcement. These investments, he said, will make it “less likely that honest taxpayers will hear from the IRS or receive an audit letter.”
Additional funding for the agency has been politically contentious since 2013, when the IRS under the Obama administration was found to be using inappropriate criteria to vet Tea Party groups and other organizations applying for tax-exempt status.
In subsequent years, the IRS has mostly been on the verge of losing funding battles in Congress, though a subsequent 2017 report found that both conservative and liberal groups were singled out for scrutiny.
In April, Rettig told lawmakers that the agency’s budget had shrunk by more than 15 percent over the past decade after accounting for inflation, and said the number of full-time employees — 79,000 in the last fiscal year — was approaching 1974 level.
But Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.) and other Republicans disagree with the argument that money will be concentrated in auditing the wealthy.
“This is about recklessly auditing and harassing America’s small businesses and families who they know can’t afford the legal fees to fight this army,” Malliotakis said.
A decade of Republican-led budget cuts has left the IRS in trouble, said Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.
“The only way House Republicans can make it more obvious that they’re helping wealthy tax cheaters is by coming forward and saying it precisely in those words,” Wyden said. The bill has gone nowhere in the Senate. “
The White House said President Joe Biden would veto the bill if it reached his desk, saying the richest 1% of Americans hide about 20% of their income so they don’t have to pay taxes on it, diverting more The tax burden on the middle class.
“With the first piece of economic legislation in the new Congress, House Republicans have made it clear that their top economic priority is to allow the rich and billion-dollar corporations to stay tax-free while making life harder for ordinary middle-class families who pay The taxes they owe,” the White House said. (Associated Press)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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