John,

Billionaires are making their move. With Congress facing a December 20th deadline to keep the government running, Congressional Republicans are plotting to slash $20 billion from IRS enforcement in the upcoming funding bill, a move that would cripple the agency's ability to crack down on wealthy tax cheats while decimating services for working families.[1]

Thanks to recent investments, the IRS has recovered $1.3 billion in unpaid taxes from high-income Americans who either failed to file returns or didn't fully pay what they owed.[2] This enforcement is finally making wealthy tax dodgers obey the law like the rest of us.

These investments have also dramatically improved services for working families. Wait times for phone assistance have plummeted from 28 minutes to just 3 minutes.[3] The agency is answering 65% more calls than before. A survey of 15,000 users of the new Direct File program found they’d saved $5.6 million in tax preparation fees.[4]

Now, Congressional Republicans want to destroy this progress to protect themselves and their wealthy donors. Their proposed cuts would gut the IRS's ability to go after rich tax cheats while forcing working Americans to wait longer for basic services.

Tell Congress: Don't slash IRS funding in the end-of-year government funding bill. Let’s keep cracking down on wealthy tax cheats and giving ordinary taxpayers better customer service.

The improvements we've seen from the IRS didn't happen by accident. They happened because Congressional Democrats invested in making the tax system work for everyone, not just the wealthy. The IRS cleared massive tax-filing backlogs and improved their responsiveness to taxpayer needs by hiring 5,000 new customer-service representatives.

Proposed Republican cuts would cripple the IRS's ability to collect billions in unpaid taxes from the wealthy while devastating services for working families, allowing the rich and corporations to continue breaking the law while increasing frustrations for law-abiding taxpayers.

These cuts would return us to the broken system of the past decade, where audit rates of high-income filers dropped by 87% between 2010 and 2021, allowing wealthy tax cheats to get away with paying nothing while working families faced more scrutiny and longer wait times for basic services.

The December 20th deadline is approaching fast. If we don't act now, Republicans will succeed in protecting wealthy tax cheats at the expense of everyone else.

We can't let them get away with this assault on tax fairness. Tell Congress: Stand up for working families; don't cut IRS funding in the end-of-year government funding bill.

Together, we can build a tax system that works for all of us.

David Kass
Executive Director
Americans for Tax Fairness Action Fund

[1] House GOP proposes IRS funding cuts, defunding free tax filing system
[2] IRS collected $1 billion in back taxes from millionaires in less than a year | CNN Politics
[3] IRS Efforts to Improve Customer Service | Government Accountability Office
[4] IRS Direct File Pilot Program Filing Season 2024 After Action Report