Sen. Joni Ernst is right on the money: The IRS should force its own workers to cough up the millions they owe in taxes before squeezing one more red cent from everyday Americans.
The Republican wrote Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Tuesday, urging “America’s least favorite agency” to claw back up to $46 million in unpaid taxes from its workforce “before going after private citizens.”
That should be a given.
Last summer, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration reported more than 5,800 former and current IRS employees and contractors delinquent on tax payments as of May 2023, with a whopping two thirds not even on installment plans to pay back what they owed.
And the response was. . . crickets.
The Washington Examiner found that some 860 tax-dodging IRS workers still working for the government as of last November, including 50 who “willfully evaded” collection.
Unacceptable: Every one of these fraudsters should get axed, with every available ounce of agency manpower laser-focused on getting the cheats to fork the cash over.
What is the IRS’s excuse for not collecting the unpaid taxes?
That’s its only job.
The agency completes hundreds of thousands of audits per year, and it’s especially dogged in its pursuit of unpaid taxes from working-class stiffs and small businesses.
In fact, the vast majority of audits are done on Average Joes, since their filings are usually far less complex than billionaires’ and they can’t afford the accountants and lawyers to fight back.
It’s time to sic the notorious money-hunting machinery of the IRS on the IRS itself.
The agency is already deeply unpopular; allowing its own agents to skate on a crime that most Americans face steep consequences for only further erodes trust and gives the impression that government workers are a protected class.
The 2024 report can’t be swept under the rug.
The next $46 million the agency pulls in should come from its own delinquent rank-and-file.
Balance due, taxman.
Pay up.
