REPORT: Biden’s IRS Bullied Some Of The Poorest Taxpayers In 2022

What was it that the IRS was doing in 2022? Was it looking into the finances of the fat cats and probing those connected to Hunter Biden or scheming lobbyists like him to see if those involved in influence peddling were reporting all the different streams of gifts and incomes they had for the year?

No, of course not. Instead, according to a recent report released by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), it appears that the IRS spent 2022 using its billions in pre-existing and extra funding from the so-called Inflation Reduction Act to bully the poorest taxpayers.

TRAC, reporting on that shocking data and what the IRS has been doing to the poorest Americans, noted that:

Last year over 164 million individual income tax returns were filed. The IRS audited 626,204 returns, down from 659,003 during FY 2021. Less than 100,000 of these (93,595) were regular audits in contrast to correspondence audits (532,609). Together this means that last year the odds of audit had fallen to 3.8 out of every 1,000 returns filed (0.38%). For FY 2021, the odds of audit had been 4.1 out of every 1,000 returns filed (0.41%).

The taxpayer class with unbelievably high audit rates – five and a half times virtually everyone else – were low-income wage-earners taking the earned income tax credit. This credit is provided to offset the taxes for the lowest wage-earners in the country. As we previously have reported, [3] this group of taxpayers have historically been targeted not because they account for the most tax under-reporting, but because they are easy marks in an era when IRS increasingly relies upon correspondence audits yet doesn’t have the resources to assist taxpayers or answer their questions.

By contrast, the very wealthy largely escaped intense scrutiny of their tax returns, with the same TRAC report on the IRS’ 2022 activities also reporting that:

While the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act provides the IRS with a large expansion of future funding to beef up audits of the rich, last year IRS revenue agents were only able to audit a small number of millionaire returns. Indeed, during FY 2022, the odds a millionaire was audited by an IRS revenue agent was just 1.1 percent.

During FY 2022, years of budget cuts and increased needs in other sectors left the IRS with only around 1,400 staff-years of revenue agent time to apply to the 165 million income tax 1040 returns that were filed. Even though the IRS applied one-fourth of these hours to auditing millionaires, still barely over 1 out of every 100 millionaires were audited.

So, it turns out the outrage over the tens of billions of dollars in extra funding for the IRS in the Inflation Reduction Act was well-founded as, despite the claims of Team Biden and the credulous “journalists” boosting it, the IRS is not setting its sights only on those making above $400,000. Rather, it’s using “correspondence audits”, as the TRAC report details, to bully and press the poorest Americans, specifically low-income wage-earners taking the earned income tax credit, while ignoring the overwhelming majority of the tax returns provided by the wealthiest Americans.

The IRS shouldn’t be bullying and harassing anyone, rich or poor. But the latest TRAC data shows that we were lied to yet again when the Uniparty told us all that IRS funding was going toward investigating the wealthiest rather than average Americans.