John,

Thanks to President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, the IRS now has the funding to go after hundreds of millions of dollars owed in back taxes by over a thousand millionaires and 75 large businesses.

Since the bill was signed last August, the IRS has identified 1,600 millionaires owing more than $250,000 in tax debt each. So far, it has already collected $160 million in back taxes.

For over a generation, Republicans in Congress have demonized and defunded the IRS in order to protect their billionaire donors. They enacted budget cuts so severe, the IRS was left toothless to audit the more complex and inventive tax avoidance schemes of the wealthy, leaving the agency to focus audits on the poor and the middle class instead.

It’s no surprise that Wall Street billionaires are still fighting to cut back IRS funding, knowing a fully-funded IRS can and will go after wealthy tax cheats.

With the IRS under constant attack by wealthy Republicans, Congress needs to know the IRS has our support. Tell Congress to increase, not cut, funding for the IRS now.

It may seem strange that, until recently, the five most audited counties in the U.S. were primarily Black, low-income, and in the Deep South. The de facto racism of these policies were in fact due to the low-income status of these communities. Lacking funds to go after the wealthy, IRS policy had been to prioritize audits of recipients of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC).

Meanwhile, audits on the rich had fallen -- just as congressional Republicans liked it.

But now, with enough resources to go after the rich, a recent investigation shows that every additional $1 spent on auditing taxpayers above the 90th income percentile produces over $12 in revenue.

Up-to-date taxpayer services are another major benefit of full funding. Between 2022 and 2023, when funding kicked in, phone response times improved from an intolerable average wait of 27 minutes to just four minutes (not bad!). And the percentage of callers who spoke with a live person increased from a measly 13% to a solid 87%.  

Meanwhile, with modernized scanning technology, the IRS was able to digitally process 80 times more returns in the first 3 months of 2023, than it had in the entire year of 2022. The results: faster refunds for us, and fairer application of the tax laws across the board -- just what the billionaires don’t want.

The upshot is that a fully funded IRS makes it harder for the rich to cheat and easier for us to get our refunds quickly. To eliminate de facto anti-Black racism from taxation practices and improve fairness in taxation, we need to support the IRS and protect its full funding.

Tell Congress we want tax fairness for all Americans, regardless of race or income level! We support fully funding the IRS. Add your name now.

Thank you for standing up for tax fairness across the board!

- Amanda

Amanda Ford, Director
Democracy for America
Advocacy Fund