Senate Republicans Introduce Bill to Block ‘Super-Sized IRS’ from Targeting Middle-Class Americans

Nicholas DolingerSeptember 15, 2022

A group of Republican U.S. senators introduced a new bill on Sept. 11 designed to curtail the growing power of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

The bill, which is sponsored by Senators James Lankford (R-Okla.) and Mike Crapo (R-ID), responds to the Inflation Reduction Act signed into law in August, which allots $80 billion of additional funding to the IRS. The new surplus in funding has raised alarms that the IRS will use its power to harass middle-class Americans, and it is this fear that the new bill attempts to address.

The purpose of the bill is simple: The proposed legislation stipulates that none of the additional funding provided to the IRS in the Inflation Reduction Act should be used to audit Americans making less than $400,000 annually.

“With their so-called ‘Inflation Reduction Act,’ the Democrats just gave the IRS $80 billion to hire thousands of new IRS enforcement agents to squeeze more money from taxpayers’ pocketbooks,” Senator Lankford said in a statement. “Democrats needed billions to pay for their progressive Green New Deal climate-change policies in their bill, and their gimmicks and games are going to worsen our economic tailspin and higher costs for taxpayers in all income levels.”

The bill’s co-sponsor is in consensus with Lankford, arguing that the targeting of the middle class will be a necessary feature of the new IRS agenda, as the agency probes deeper into the finances of middle-class Americans.

“Democrats cannot achieve their desired tax revenue goals without targeting the middle class, small businesses, and taxpayers earning under $400,000 per year—taxpayers who cannot afford teams of lawyers and legal fees—which is why they rejected my original amendment,” Crapo said in a statement. “While advocates promise they do not intend to increase audits on people making less than $400,000, the best way to protect those taxpayers is to turn