‘Smashmouth With Small Businesses’: Tax Reform Expert Blasts Biden’s Call For 87K More IRS Workers

Speaking of President Biden’s proposal to double the size of the Internal Revenue Service and add 87,000 employees, Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, blasted that small businesses would be crushed by Biden’s plans, snapping that Biden was playing “smashmouth with small businesses,” adding that after small businesses were crushed by the lockdowns from COVID, “they’re going to go back and finish them off with IRS harassment.“

Speaking on OAN, Norquist stated, “The IRS has said they’re going to increase going after small businesses 50%. Biden gives speeches about how they’re going to go after big corporations and rich people. We know that’s not true. Large corporations are already audited regularly; rich people get audited. Where they’re planning to go, and where the IRS is telling us ahead of time, is to go after smaller businesses.”

“A lot of them deal in cash; restaurants, nail salons, beauty salons, barber shops, food trucks; all of your neighborhood grocery stores. This is where the IRS is going to go after and harass small businesses,” he continued, adding, “Even an audit can bankrupt a small business because of the time it takes away from actual work getting done.”

Host Natalie Harp noted the timing of Biden’s proposal in the wake of myriads of small business closing because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Norquist replied, “Sadly, this shouldn’t surprise you; it’s not a bug; it’s a feature. They do not like small businesses; they do not like independent businessmen and women; they do not like independent contractors or gig workers or people who have a side hustle or second job.”

“One: They’re tough to unionize, and you saw the Democratic Party in California passed a law making being an independent contractor, a free-lancer, illegal,” he pointed out. “The people of California put a measure on the ballot and repealed most of that law, but on the same day that California said no, don’t harass independent contractors, Biden won the election in California. And Biden said I don’t care what the people in California think. He signed off on organized labor, big labor bosses’ demand that you outlaw self-employed independent contractors and make everybody have a boss and be employed and they could be unionized and get union dues, which go back to the Democrats.”

Norquist went on to slam “this effort to play smashmouth with small businesses,” stating that the COVID-19 lockdowns “destroy[ed] many restaurants in the country, many small businesses in the country.” Those businesses will now be “finish[ed] off with IRS harassment,” he said.

He concluded, “And we’ve seen over the years when Biden was vice-president, the IRS went after Tea Party organizations, refused to allow them to incorporate as non-profits. Only one conservative group in three years got the approval of being a 501c3 so you could fundraise and do all the things that you’d want as a non-profit political organization. 97% of the money that the IRS union gives goes to Democrats.”

Politico reported on May 20, “President Joe Biden is proposing to double the size of the IRS, by hiring nearly 87,000 new workers over the next decade, as part of a sweeping plan to chase down tax cheats. The hiring spree, part of a bid to increase IRS funding by $80 billion, would be phased in to give the department time to adjust, the Treasury Department said in a report Thursday.”

In the report, Biden’ Treasury Department bemoaned the decrease in audited returns, writing, “The magnitude of the U.S. tax gap is the byproduct of many factors, including long-term IRS resource constraints. Since the early 2000s, the IRS budget as a share of GDP has been trending downward. … Today, the IRS has fewer auditors than at any time since World War II.As experienced employees have retired, the IRS has been unable to replace departing workers with new revenue officers and with agents of comparable training and skills necessary to pursue the most complicated noncompliance cases. Consequently, the share of audited returns has declined by nearly 45% between 2010–2018.”

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