Charles Grassley wants to warn us about the murderous invasion of the Internal Revenue Service. Any day, I expect to see Grassley bouncing down gravel roads on his old tractor like an Iowa version of Paul Revere sounding the alarm that the redcoats are coming.
Responding on FOX News to the provision of the Inflation Reduction Act that will include hiring some 87,000 IRS employees, Grassley invited viewers to be on the lookout, saying, “Are they going to have a strike force that goes in with AK-15’s already loaded ready to shoot some small business person in Iowa with these?” The senator suggested these new gun-toting agents would not bother rich citizens but would fix their sights on middle class taxpayers.
Of course, when he mentions “AK-15’s” Mr. Grassley meant to say AR15’s. (AK47’s are the old Russian rifles.) AR15’s are actually the civilian version of the M16, the Viet Nam-era military rifle. But the point is, IRS agents are locked and loaded, mindlessly marching door-to-door, demanding our precious nest eggs like zombies demanding human brains.
And maybe Grassley has a point here because, as House Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal recently observed, our Internal Revenue Service has been “starved” for decades, with staff falling by nearly 20 percent and the agency still using COBOL computer programming from the 1950’s. According to the General Accounting Office, audit rates for millionaires have dropped 60 percent since 2010, allowing the wealthiest Americans to evade $160 billion in income tax per year. So, yeah, if the IRS had guns, they would probably be muskets.
For the past two years, I had been trying to get the IRS to send me my tax refund. After spending literally hours on the phone, I finally concluded that nobody actually works there anymore. The IRS itself, admits it only has enough personnel to answer ten percent of the 73 million calls they get each year. Every time I called, I got the recording, telling me they had no information for me and to not bother writing to them because, due to the pandemic, they won’t answer letters. Finally, I was able to contact their tax advocacy office. The very pleasant, overworked young man vowed to help me obtain my refund. “Just fax me your information,” he said. Fax? They still use fax machines? Along with their rotary phones and quill pens?
Grassley is not the only conservative having a bit of fun with the IRS scare. FOX News host Brian Kilmeade speculates that agents will, “hunt down and kill middle-class taxpayers that don’t pay enough.” Republican National Committee chair, Ronna McDaniel ramped up the rhetoric, warning that the government will soon “send the IRS ‘SWAT’ team after your kids’ lemonade stand!” Even the normally sober and circumspect congresswoman, Lauren Boebert compared the new IRS efforts to “committing armed robbery on Americans.”
The Congressional Budget Office calculates that the IRS funding will not only provide more personnel to answer the phones, it should collect $200 billion in new revenue over the next ten years. It would be the best government money-maker since the Hoover Dam.
Eventually, I was able to locate a fax machine and receive my IRS refund. I admit, I had always been a little afraid of the IRS. But once I was able to speak with an agent, I thought he seemed friendly and nice. And he never once threatened to shoot me.