Tight Job Market Sees IRS Facing Uphill Battle to Hire 87,000 Staff

The Internal Revenue Service’s plan to massively expand its staff has become more difficult with the tight U.S. labor market.

The Democrats’ “Inflation Reduction Act” gave the IRS $80 billion over ten years to boost its personnel in order to collect more in unpaid taxes and upgrade its computer systems. The bill also sought to invest in climate change programs and expand Obamacare.

Biden’s Treasury Department proposed last year to increase the size of the agency by 86,852 employees by 2031, to almost double the current IRS workforce that sits nearly at 79,000, although some of the new hires will replace retirees.

The rate of new hires at the IRS also depends on how much Congress provides for its annual budget.

Republicans called the expansion proposal a “power grab” and warned that the tax agency will send armed agents after middle class taxpayers.

“The IRS is making it very clear that you not only need to be ready to audit and investigate your fellow hardworking Americans, your neighbors, and friends, you need to be ready and, to use the IRS’s words, willing to kill them,” said Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), referring to a controversial IRS job posting recruiting combat trained enforcement agents that was since removed.

The Biden administration wanted the tax agency to take a stronger approach on upper income American households and large corporations, while modernizing its operations, but Senate procedures constraints stripped that language from the bill before it was passed and signed it into law.

The new law currently lacks key salary flexibility and hiring rules that IRS officials and the administration had wanted.

Those key items would have allowed the agency to close the gaps in hiring speed and compensation between the government and the private sector in order to make the jobs more desirable.

Expanding IRS Employee Pool

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