The fact that Kevin McCarthy or Marjorie Taylor Greene or Ted Cruz or any of the other Republicans in Congress have used phrases such as "83,000 new IRS agents" or "87,000 new IRS agents" tells me nothing, unless it's part of some larger statement that translates the language of the legislation into projections of IRS staffing levels for the years starting from current year or 2022, until 2031 (the last year referenced in the bill), and explains how that translation works.
These two online news media articles that I've identified are the closest that I have found to that kind of analysis.
Marjorie Taylor Greene cannot add 2 and 2 to get 4. If she says "83,000 new IRS agents" or "87,000 new IRS agents", that's strong evidence that the Inflation Reduction Act cannot possibly result in that many new IRS agents by 2031 or during any year between now and 2031. I doubt that any of the Republicans who are talking such numbers of new IRS agents have any evidence for it in the language of the Inflation Reduction Act.
Where's their "homework"..?
As I've said, my investigative resources are finite and small, and so my investigations, of necessity, are very prioritized and limited.
I know what I've got on these numbers. I don't know what anyone else has got. Other than sound bytes (or bites) from Republican officeholders and the amusing but otherwise uninformative Internet memes that are forum member Wichita's special project.
So, you still don't have an actual number of agents that the bill will hire?. MTG has a better idea than your vague non answer. You are just as wrong as anyone else about putting a number on it. MTG at least has a clue, sense she is Congress Woman.
Why the "87,000 NEW IRS AGENTS" Republicans' sound bite is bullsh*t.
quote
Originally posted by Rickady88GT: So, you still don't have an actual number of agents that the bill will hire?. MTG has a better idea than your vague non answer. You are just as wrong as anyone else about putting a number on it. MTG at least has a clue, sense she is Congress Woman.
Can Rick or anyone else find MTG's "homework" online and post it into this discussion?
As I said at (or close to) the very end of the first page of this thread, I looked at the legislation itself. I don't see any specific numbers of IRS agents, or any specific numbers of IRS employees, which is a broader category than "agents".
It's very disingenous for Republican officeholders like MTG and their friends in the media to talk as if the Inflation Reduction Act could result in 87,000 additional IRS agents, or 87,000 new IRS agents, or even just 87,000 IRS agents "period." Look at what has to be factored in. It's in this text which I'm duplicating once again, from that recent article in TIME:
quote
The Inflation Reduction Act, a landmark climate, health care and tax package that passed the Senate on Sunday and is expected to head to Biden’s desk after the House approves it on Friday, includes roughly $78 billion for the IRS to be phased in over 10 years. A Treasury Department report from May 2021 estimated that such an investment would enable the agency to hire roughly 87,000 employees by 2031. But most of those hires would not be Internal Revenue agents, and wouldn’t be new positions.
According to a Treasury Department official, the funds would cover a wide range of positions including IT technicians and taxpayer services support staff, as well as experienced auditors who would be largely tasked with cracking down on corporate and high-income tax evaders.
“It is wholly inaccurate to describe any of these resources as being about increasing audit scrutiny of the middle class or small businesses,” Natasha Sarin, a counselor for tax policy and implementation at the Treasury Department, tells TIME.
At the same time, more than half of the agency’s current employees are eligible for retirement and are expected to leave the agency within the next five years. “There’s a big wave of attrition that’s coming and a lot of these resources are just about filling those positions,” says Sarin, an economist who has studied tax avoidance extensively and who was tapped by the Biden administration to beef up the IRS’s auditing power.
In all, the IRS might net roughly 20,000 to 30,000 more employees from the new funding, enough to restore the tax-collecting agency’s staff to where it was roughly a decade ago.
So there is funding for the IRS to hire about 87,000 new employees, but the IRS isn't going to hire them all right away. It's going to stretch out between now and the year 2031. Not all of the new employees are going to be IRS "agents". Many will be hired into other IRS job categories. And beyond that, it's not as if every IRS agent that is on the job today is going to keep working in that capacity for the IRS. Many will age out and retire. Others will retire early or find new jobs that take them out of the IRS. Some will be fired. Some will get too sick to keep working as IRS agents, and some will die. It's called "attrition".
All that seems to be LOST on Republican officeholders like MTG who are babbling about "83,000" or "87,000" IRS agents, when a reasoned and quantitative or numbers-based analysis, as we would expect from a subject matter expert like Assistant Law Professor and Treasury Department consultant Natasha Sarin, points to a much lower number of IRS agents. Much less than this "87,000" or "83,000" nonsense from certain Republican officeholders and their friends.
If anyone can show me that MTG knows more about this than Treasury Department consultant Natasha Sarin, "bring it on." Post the "receipts".
That's not going to happen.
Congratulations! You have just read about why the "87,000 NEW IRS AGENTS" Republicans' sound bite is bullsh*t.
[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 08-17-2022).]
If all of the funding for the IRS in the Inflation Reduction Act were used to hire new IRS agents and not any other categories of IRS workers, and if all of the IRS agents that are currently on the job kept working as IRS agents until the year 2031 (even after they're dead, which would be the case for quite a few of them), there would be 87,000 more IRS agents in 2031 than there are now.
Think about it.
Only from the mind of "MTG".
[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 08-17-2022).]
Why the "87,000 NEW IRS AGENTS" Republicans' sound bite is bullsh*t.
---{a little trimming and snipping}---
...Assistant Law Professor and Treasury Department consultant Natasha Sarin, points to a much lower number of IRS agents. Much less than this "87,000" or "83,000" nonsense from certain Republican officeholders and their friends.
....Treasury Department consultant Natasha Sarin, "bring it on." Post the "receipts".
That's not going to happen.
Congratulations! You have just read about why the "87,000 NEW IRS AGENTS" Republicans' sound bite is bullsh*t.
The Internal Revenue Service does not plan to use the nearly $80 billion it's set to receive in funding from the Inflation Reduction Act to hire 87,000 new agents in order to target middle class Americans, a Treasury Department official told ABC News, rejecting a claim widely circulated by Republican lawmakers and right-wing media personalities.
A sizable portion of the money will go toward improving taxpayer services and modernizing antiquated, paper-based IRS operations, Treasury Department spokesperson Julia Krieger said, in an effort to update the agency—well documented as being chronically starved of resources for decades.
The agency also is planning on hiring auditors who can enforce the tax laws against high-income Americans and corporations, not the middle class, along with employees to provide customer service to taxpayers, the official said.
The majority of hires will fill the positions of about 50,000 IRS employees on the verge of retirement, Krieger said, which will net about [20,000 to 30,000 additional IRS workers,] not 87,000.
Sheldon Whitehouse? One of the two U.S. Senators, both Democrats, from Rhode Island?
I'd very much like to see that.
Brian Deese, the Director of the Economic Council for the Brandon administration gave that number. Brian Deese, validated the Republican talking point. Brian Deese essentially said MTG, is correct. Brian Deese by default contradicted EVERYTHING you and your propaganda sources said.
Originally posted by Rickady88GT: Brian Deese, the Director of the Economic Council for the Brandon administration gave that number. Brian Deese, validated the Republican talking point. Brian Deese essentially said MTG, is correct. Brian Deese by default contradicted EVERYTHING you and your propaganda sources said.
That number is 87,000. It's 87,000 hires for the IRS. It's based on the amount of funding for the IRS in the Inflation Reduction Act. It's funding, that according to the text of the Inflation Reduction Act (which I looked at, myself), is for IRS staffing, and it is funding that is spread out over the decade from Current Year to Year 2031.
I tried (quickly) to find a transcript or video of that statement from Brian Deese. I didn't come up with anything.
That same number (87,000) is in all three of the "propaganda" reports that I have posted in this thread, from TIME, PolitiFact and ABC News.
I seriously doubt that Brian Deese said anything that contradicts the bottom line of my "propaganda", and the bottom line is that there are not going to be 80,000 more tax return auditors at the IRS than there are at this very moment. Not even close.
If the IRS hires a tax returns auditor or agent after one of them has retired from the IRS, the net increase in the number of IRS agents is zero.
If the IRS hires someone for IT support or for some other purpose that is not to audit tax returns, the net increase in the number of "IRS agents" is zero.
I would be gobsmacked to discover that Brian Deese has said anything that is in contradiction with this, from ABC News. From my previous post:
quote
The majority of hires will fill the positions of about 50,000 IRS employees on the verge of retirement, [Treasury Department spokesperson Julia Krieger said], which will net about [20,000 to 30,000 additional IRS workers,] not 87,000.
Rinselberg, the Brandon administration through Brian Deese gave an actual number. You still refused to give ANY real data. I will believe MTG before your propaganda sources. If the Brandon administration gives bad news like 82k new agents, I believe it will be worse than that.
Some may ponder whether MTG was "onto something" when she used Twitter to repeat a speculation that California wildfires were being engineered from orbit, with a "space laser" that was being secretly funded by George Soros. That was in 2017 or 2018, if memory serves me. I may be wrong about the year, but I know that I could find this story online if I wanted to look. I'm almost certain that I could post an image of her Twitter message. Messages like that, "you don't forget."
I can only believe that Brian Deese made a reference to the possibility of 82,000 new hires for the IRS, without explaining that it could be as many as 10 more years and surely, at least several more years for the IRS funding in the Inflation Reduction Act to turn into that many new hires.
I believe he offered that number (82,000) without distinguishing between IRS agents who can audit tax returns, vs. the other positions that the IRS will be hiring for out of that funding, such as IT support and "customer" (taxpayer) support; etc.
I believe he offered that number without explaining about the other large number of IRS employees who are certain to be retiring soon. They have "aged out" and the IRS has not heretofore been funded to hire younger people into these positions to step up and replace them from within the ranks.
It's not unusual for a White House spokesperson or other administration official to say a number like that, without explaining the other numbers that have to be accounted for, in order to arrive at a bottom line.
If someone were to post a transcript or video with that remark from Brian Deese, that would be meritorious.
[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 08-19-2022).]
Originally posted by rinselberg: I can only believe that Brian Deese made a reference to the possibility of 82,000 new hires for the IRS, without explaining that it could be as many as 10 more years and surely, at least several more years for the IRS funding in the Inflation Reduction Act to turn into that many new hires.
You can only believe that your propaganda sources lied to you again and you refuse to see the truth EVEN WHEN the political system that YOU support is say the opposite of YOUR favorite propagandists. Oh by the way, how about that Brian Stelter? Was he fired for NOT being propagandist enough LOLOLOLOL
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I believe he offered that number (82,000) without distinguishing between IRS agents who can audit tax returns, vs. the other positions that the IRS will be hiring for out of that funding, such as IT support and "customer" (taxpayer) support; etc.
LOLOLOLOL, say MTG was right without saying MTG was right,.....and use lost of words to say it....LOLOLOLLL
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I believe he offered that number without explaining about the other large number of IRS employees
LOLOLOL, say MTG was right without saying she was right. LOLOLOL
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If someone were to post a transcript or video with that remark from Brian Deese, that would be meritorious.
Why would anyone go through the trouble for you? You have done nothing but copy paste propaganda and bias opinions, disregarding EVERYTHING that goes against your belief and political systems? You have already disregarded what he said without even hearing it? You posted this thread without even having a clue as to how many IRS agents will even be hired. You have no credibility, you have no capacity to see outside you box. You show absolutely no interest in participating in debate. You are exactly the type of person you rail against, here on PFF, you are just the flipside of the same extreme coin. You post little of your own opins, but MANY opinions and propagandists publishings as if they ARE the facts. It is one thing Ronald to say your opin, it is quite another to post opinion articles as a form.of facts to back YOUR "opinions". Ronald, I actually appreciate hearing a different point of view, as long as it is contextually honest and true. Arguments and anti-opinions for the sake of "balance" or "representing the voiceless or otherside" is ridiculous on it's face because it is disingenuous. And in your case it shows.
Just look at how many posts you have made, in a thread you have created and how many words you used,.... just to say how wrong others are for saying 87k,,...... but you have no idea how many there actually will be? Without even taking into consideration that members of Congress have a better understanding of the legislation than members of the media. I admit that I am biased towards Conservatism, I don't require a 3rd party to point it out. This means I require facts to debate and discuss points and policies. I REFUSE to just blindly accept opinions and feelings in place of facts, data and research in an adult debate or discussion.
[This message has been edited by Rickady88GT (edited 08-19-2022).]
Ray, a long time ago I have made it a goal of mine to NEVER grow old, bitter and angry. I won't be taking any advice from you because I have vowed to not be like you.
Ray, a long time ago I have made it a goal of mine to NEVER grow old, bitter and angry. I won't be taking any advice from you because I have vowed to not be like you.
Originally posted by Rickady88GT: Why would anyone go through the trouble for you? You have done nothing but copy paste propaganda and bias opinions, disregarding EVERYTHING that goes against your belief and political systems? You have already disregarded what he said without even hearing it? You posted this thread without even having a clue as to how many IRS agents will even be hired. You have no credibility, you have no capacity to see outside you box. You show absolutely no interest in participating in debate. You are exactly the type of person you rail against, here on PFF, you are just the flipside of the same extreme coin. You post little of your own opins, but MANY opinions and propagandists publishings as if they ARE the facts. It is one thing Ronald to say your opin, it is quite another to post opinion articles as a form.of facts to back YOUR "opinions". Ronald, I actually appreciate hearing a different point of view, as long as it is contextually honest and true. Arguments and anti-opinions for the sake of "balance" or "representing the voiceless or otherside" is ridiculous on it's face because it is disingenuous. And in your case it shows.
Just look at how many posts you have made, in a thread you have created and how many words you used,.... just to say how wrong others are for saying 87k,,...... but you have no idea how many there actually will be? Without even taking into consideration that members of Congress have a better understanding of the legislation than members of the media.
I admit that I am biased towards Conservatism, I don't require a 3rd party to point it out. This means I require facts to debate and discuss points and policies. I REFUSE to just blindly accept opinions and feelings in place of facts, data and research in an adult debate or discussion.[/size]
Do ALL members of Congress have a better understanding of the legislation than "members of the media"..? (I would translate "members of the media" into "how the IRS-related parts of the Inflation Reduction Act are being reported by legacy or mainstream media, including TIME, ABC News, and PolitiFact.")
I truly doubt that MTG does have any understanding of the Inflation Reduction Act. I think her opposition to it—and I acknowledge anyone's legitimate right to oppose it—is not because of any understanding of it, on her part.
But just because MTG (maybe), or Ted Cruz, or Kevin McCarthy or any of the other prominent Republicans have some intelligent understanding of the legislation, does not lead me to believe that they are being honest and straightforward in their public remarks about it, when they say (in the way that they have been saying) "87,000 IRS agents".
They are being partisan and political and misleading to the public with these "87,000" remarks. They are not being factual and objective about it.
That's my opinion. And my opinion is based on what I have read about it in the various published reports that I have referenced throughout this discussion, in the very first post that created this discussion, and in the other posts when I returned to this discussion to continue with it.
As I said somewhere on the first page of this thread, I have looked at the actual text of the legislation. The part of it that is about funding for the IRS. It's not easy reading, but I stand on what I've been saying about it. The IRS funding in the Inflation Reduction Act cannot be used to support an "army" of "87,000 new IRS agents" that would be directly responsible for and hands-on involved in the auditing of federal tax returns. Not "87,000 new IRS agents" and not even "87,000 IRS agents, 'period'..."
That number (87,000) is more than the number of all current IRS employees (about 80,000), adding up every category of job within the IRS... tax return auditors and all the rest.
Just in case anyone forgot, this (from TIME) is how I started this discussion:
quote
The Inflation Reduction Act, a landmark climate, health care and tax package that passed the Senate on Sunday and is expected to head to Biden’s desk after the House approves it on Friday, includes roughly $78 billion for the IRS to be phased in over 10 years. A Treasury Department report from May 2021 estimated that such an investment would enable the agency to hire roughly 87,000 employees by 2031. But most of those hires would not be Internal Revenue agents, and wouldn’t be new positions.
According to a Treasury Department official, the funds would cover a wide range of positions including IT technicians and taxpayer services support staff, as well as experienced auditors who would be largely tasked with cracking down on corporate and high-income tax evaders.
“It is wholly inaccurate to describe any of these resources as being about increasing audit scrutiny of the middle class or small businesses,” Natasha Sarin, a counselor for tax policy and implementation at the Treasury Department, tells TIME.
At the same time, more than half of the agency’s current employees are eligible for retirement and are expected to leave the agency within the next five years. “There’s a big wave of attrition that’s coming and a lot of these resources are just about filling those positions,” says Sarin, an economist who has studied tax avoidance extensively and who was tapped by the Biden administration to beef up the IRS’s auditing power.
In all, the IRS might net roughly 20,000 to 30,000 more employees from the new funding, enough to restore the tax-collecting agency’s staff to where it was roughly a decade ago.
[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 08-19-2022).]
A 2020 report from OpenTheBooks, titled “The Militarization of the U.S. Executive Agencies,” shows that the IRS Criminal Investigation division has a stockpile of 4,600 guns.
The firearms include 3,282 pistols, 621 shotguns, 539 rifles, 15 fully automatic firearms, and four revolvers, the report says.
The Government Accountability Office, a federal watchdog agency, reported in 2018 that the IRS had 3.1 million rounds of ammunition for pistols and revolvers.
The tax agency had 1.4 million rounds of ammunition for rifles, the GAO report said, along with 367,750 shotgun rounds and 56,000 rounds for automatic weapons.
[This message has been edited by Wichita (edited 08-19-2022).]
I'm not sure there aren't some legitimate questions to be asked about the IRS and its enforcement agents who have access to IRS-supplied firearms and ammo.
"I found the GOP's gun-toting, tax collecting boogeyman." He wasn't with the IRS. He was with the Florida Seminole County Tax Collector's office. And he was a Republican. Ja'han Jones for MSNBC; August 19, 2022. https://www.msnbc.com/the-r...republican-rcna43909
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The GOP is pushing a new conspiracy about IRS workers. But the only person I could find fitting their description is a Republican.
I'm not sure there aren't some legitimate questions to be asked about the IRS and its enforcement agents who have access to IRS-supplied firearms and ammo.
"I found the GOP's gun-toting, tax collecting boogeyman." He wasn't with the IRS. He was with the Florida Seminole County Tax Collector's office. And he was a Republican. Ja'han Jones for MSNBC; August 19, 2022. https://www.msnbc.com/the-r...republican-rcna43909
Originally posted by williegoat: So, there are only 37,000 new agents and some of them won't even have guns? I feel much better now.
The 37,000 is a ceiling on the number of additional IRS workers, compared to the current number of about 80,000. That's what to expect by year 2031. Not tomorrow, or next year.
The new IRS workers that will be hired out of the funding from the Inflation Reduction Act will include other categories of IRS workers, not just tax auditors and enforcement agents. Other categories, such as IT support.
Upon scrolling through the actual Congressional legislation, it looks to me like all of the IRS-related verbiage is in one fairly brief section (brief, compared to the entire bill) that begins with the section heading in all capital letters:
quote
PART 3—FUNDING THE INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE AND IMPROVING TAXPAYER COMPLIANCE
I don't see language in the bill that describes specific numbers of IRS staffing levels, hires, new positions (etc.). The number(s) of IRS workers that will be funded by the Inflation Reduction Act are being derived by subject matter experts from the amount of funding for the IRS in the Inflation Reduction Act. Close to $80 billion.
[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 08-19-2022).]
