Supercharged IRS Will Collect $20 Billion More From Americans Making Less Than $400,000 Under Inflation Reduction Act: Report

Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee say they have received information from the non-partisan scorekeeper at the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) challenging the Biden administration’s narrative that Americans making less than $400,000 a year won’t see higher IRS audit rates.

The remarks came in an Aug. 12 statement that was published as the Democrat-controlled House passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes nearly $46 billion in additional funding for IRS enforcement of the $80 billion or so total funding boost to the tax agency.

Committee Republicans said that the CBO statement they were provided with confirms that, under the new legislation, lower and middle-income Americans will be squeezed harder by the tax man to the tune of at least $20 billion.

‘Supercharged IRS’ Coming For Middle-Income Americans

This figure was arrived at by calculating how much less tax revenue would flow into government coffers if legislators had accepted amendment 5404 (pdf) proposed by Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) that explicitly called for none of the funds appropriated under the Inflation Reduction Act to be used to audit taxpayers making less than $400,000 a year.

“The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) confirms that had this amendment passed and lower- and middle-income taxpayers been protected, revenue in Democrats’ bill would have been reduced by at least $20 billion,” Committee Republicans said.

This confirms that “at least $20 billion of the $124 billion in new revenue expected by a supercharged IRS will be coming from higher audits on low- and middle-income Americans” and that this would be “in addition to existing audits on these income levels.”

The Epoch Times has reached out to the CBO with a request for confirmation of the scorekeeper’s assessment and comment, with no response received by publication.

‘Absolutely Not’ Increasing Audit Scrutiny?

Republicans said the CBO statement proves that