The Trump Administration and Elon Musk are waging a war on the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), all to help out their billionaire donors.
Today, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), and over a dozen other senators demanded that the Internal Revenue Service’s acting inspector general evaluate the harmful effects of the Trump administration’s decision to gut the IRS. Trump and Musk have fired 7,000 IRS employees so far, and reports indicate they are steamrolling ahead with plans to cut the agency’s 90,000 person workforce in half and close over 100 Taxpayer Assistance Centers in the middle of filing season.
Groundwork Collaborative Senior Advisor for Economic Policy Emily DiVito, who worked on IRS modernization efforts while at the Treasury Department, shared the following statement:
“Slashing the IRS workforce in half in the middle of tax season packs a one-two punch: Delaying refunds for working families and giving wealthy tax cheats a free pass. Elon Musk and Donald Trump are robbing Americans of their time and money to fund tax write-offs for billionaires.”
Investing in the IRS pays off for taxpayers – literally. Every extra $1 spent on auditing the top 0.1% of earners returns more than $26 to taxpayers each year in revenue. Additionally, with expanded enforcement capacity, the IRS recovered over $1 billion in unpaid taxes from the ultra-wealthy.
Biden-era investments in the IRS also drastically modernized the agency for everyday taxpayers, cutting down customer service wait times from 28 minutes to just 3 minutes, allowing the agency to help more than 100,000 taxpayers file their returns in person, and, most notably, providing millions of Americans with a free and secure option to file their taxes.
But Republicans do not care. Seven former IRS commissioners from both Democratic and Republican administrations condemned the Trump administration’s mass IRS layoffs, calling it a “huge mistake” as these workers took care of compliance, customer service, and modernization efforts. Firing 45,000 more employees could allow wealthy tax cheats to line their pockets with hundreds of billions of dollars.
Ultimately, dismantling the IRS fits into the GOP’s long-time goal of eliminating the agency entirely to allow wealthy tax cheats to get away with murder.
Email press@groundworkcollaborative.org to speak with a Groundwork expert about the Trump administration’s attacks on the IRS and what that means for taxpayers.