IRS Plans To Hire 30,000 Employees Over Two Years

The US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced that it intends to recruit almost 30,000 new employees and implement new technology over the next two years. The move is part of an $80 billion investment plan aimed at enhancing tax enforcement and client service. The agency confirmed that it will spend approximately $8.64 billion of the new funding during the 2023 and 2024 fiscal years. It indicated that 8,782 of the new hires during that time frame will be enforcement staff.

U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo told reporters that “The IRS is going to hire more data scientists than they ever have for enforcement purposes.” These will support traditional tax attorneys and revenue agents in using new data analytics technology to identify audit targets.

The IRS is also set to increase its customer service recruitment after employing 5,000 new taxpayer services staff in recent months for answering telephones, reopening taxpayer assistance centres, and processing tax returns. The 148-page plan states that customer services hiring will total 13,883 full-time equivalent staff over the next two years. However, many of these new hires will replace the nearly 12,000 retiring IRS employees over the next two years, including more than 4,700 enforcement staff.

The additional $80 billion in funding from the Inflation Reduction Act of 2021 is intended to rebuild the agency’s audit capabilities and enhance its 1960s-era computer technology following a decade of funding cuts, primarily by Republican-controlled Congresses. It also aims to support closing the “tax gap,” estimated by the Treasury to be around $600 billion annually, by focusing new audits on the wealthiest Americans.

The Congressional Budget Office has approximated that the additional funding will produce about $204 billion in new revenue during the upcoming decade, with higher taxes beyond the ten-year budget window. It supported the Inflation Reduction Act investments by allocating monetary funds of up to $400 billion over the same time frame.

The new IRS Commissioner, Danny Werfel, informed reporters that the agency would soon provide hiring and spending plans for the 2025 fiscal year and consistently update the operating plan. Werfel affirmed that the agency’s ability to deploy new technology to automate many functions would determine future staffing needs.

Published under: IRS