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Fact check: False claims about IRS enforcement, taxes on Americans

Sudiksha Kochi
USA TODAY

The claim: The IRS is hiring 87,000 'soldiers' to prosecute citizens and raising taxes on those who make $30,000 or more

On Aug. 16, President Joe Biden signed H.R. 5376, a health care and climate bill that  increases Internal Revenue Service hires, invests in clean energy and lowers the cost of prescription drugs for seniors, among other things. But some social media users misinterpreted provisions of the legislation. 

A Facebook post shared Aug. 15 by Wesley Smith, who lost the Republican primary for Missouri's 2nd Congressional District, shows a man dressed in a Nazi SS uniform, which is labeled with the text "IRS New Uniforms coming soon."

The caption reads: "87,000 more soldiers to investigate and prosecute American citizens. All while raising taxes on those who make $30,000 or more."

Another Facebook post shared Aug. 16 includes the same caption, just without the image of the soldier. 

The claim generated more than 600 shares in less than a week.

But the claim is baseless on several fronts.

The Treasury Department, the IRS' parent organization, has not yet released a finalized plan on how many IRS employees it will hire with the legislation's funds. And tax policy experts told USA TODAY a majority of the hires will not be special agents, as the post implies.

The legislation does not increase individual tax rates either, according to a Treasury Department spokesperson. 

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USA TODAY reached out to Smith and the social media users who shared the claim for comment.

The US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) building is seen on January 28, 2019.

New IRS employees will reportedly be hired over several years

H.R. 5376 allocated close to $80 billion in funding to the IRS over the next decade for tax enforcement, taxpayer services and the hiring of more IRS personnel, according to a Congressional Research Service report. 

The Treasury Department laid out a plan in 2021 that said $80 billion would allow the IRS to hire 86,852 full-time employees by 2031, according to the Washington Post. But this estimate was from a year ago, and it is unclear how many employees the Internal Revenue Service will be able to hire, Howard Gleckman, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, which analyzes tax issues, told USA TODAY. 

"The difference between now and a year ago salaries have gone up," Gleckman said. "So presumably they couldn't hire as many people as they thought they could because they have to pay them more. ... Again, we don't have an exact business plan for the IRS."

The IRS will determine its final hiring plans for the next decade in the upcoming months, as Verify and the Associated Press reported. Experts also said the employees who will be hired won't all be special agents either, as the post implies with the word "soldiers." 

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Special agents are the only IRS personnel authorized to carry guns and conduct criminal investigations, Justin Cole, a spokesperson for the IRS Criminal Investigations unit, told USA TODAY in an email. The IRS currently has about 80,000 employees, of which 2,100 are special agents.

Most of the new hires, however, will be comprised of positions such as IT support staff, people to answer the helpline phones and staff to assist taxpayers, Steve Ellis, president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan federal budget watchdog organization, told USA TODAY in an email. Most of these employees will not carry guns or see taxpayers in person, Gleckman said.

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Ellis also said the new employees would in many cases replace staff who left via retirement and other attrition.

The Associated Press reported that the IRS has lost 50,000 employees in the past five years due to attrition. Natasha Sarin, the Treasury Department’s counselor for tax policy and implementation, told the AP that "more than half of IRS employees who work in enforcement are currently eligible for retirement."

These hires also come in the wake of a decade of budget cuts that left the IRS unable to lay off or replace talent, and the COVID-19 pandemic has contributed to these cuts, according to Gleckman.

No individual tax rate increase under the act

Contrary to the post's claim, there is no individual income tax increase for anybody under H.R. 5376, according to Gleckman. A Treasury Department official also confirmed to USA TODAY that the legislation does not raise individual tax rates. 

"The tax increases included in the bill apply to corporations – not individuals," the spokesperson said in an emailed statement to USA TODAY.

USA TODAY previously reported that there are two taxes on corporations under the act: a 15% minimum tax on corporations that make over $1 billion in revenue and a 1% excise tax on corporate share buybacks.

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While the corporations subject to these taxes write the checks to the revenue agency, "ultimately the cost falls on some combination of shareholders and workers, both of which are all over the income scale, even below $30,000," William McBride, vice president of federal tax policy at the Tax Foundation, an independent tax policy nonprofit, told USA TODAY in an email.

Our rating: False

Based on our research, we rate FALSE the claim that the IRS is hiring 87,000 "soldiers" to prosecute citizens and raising taxes on those who make $30,000 or more. The 87,000 figure was an estimate from a 2021 report by the Treasury Department; the IRS hasn't yet finalized a plan. A majority of the hires will not be special agents and thus will not be carrying weapons. The legislation does not raise individual tax rates for anyone, according to a Treasury Department spokesperson.

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