Key Points
- To pay for Build Back Better, Biden will supercharge the IRS, increasing audits.
- The administration says they are going after “wealthy tax cheats” but the new audits will target lower and middle class earners.
- The CBO has raised serious doubts that this new tax initiative will cover the cost of the bill.
Last month, The Drill Down reported that Biden’s Build Back Better bill fell way, way short of the “zero dollar” price tag lauded by Joe, Nancy, Chuck and the rest of the true-blue crew. Dems swore up and down that the $1.5 trillion-dollar package would cost Americans nothing.
Well, they are entitled to their opinions. But they are not entitled to their own math.
The Congressional Budget Office quickly dashed all hopes of the trillion-dollar freebie after releasing its report on the Build Back boondoggle. Turns out, it will actually add to the national debt.
“CBO estimates that enacting this legislation would result in a net increase in the deficit totaling $367 billion over the 2022-2031 period, not counting any additional revenue that may be generated by additional funding for tax enforcement,” CBO Director Phillip Swagel said.
But the Biden administration prepared for this, right? They are going to beef up the IRS, making it easier to audit Americans; really ferret out those folks “not paying their fair share.”
But the CBO isn’t exactly sure about that idea, either.
“The CBO also found that several White House proposals for generating revenue to pay for the programs are unsound,” the Washington Examiner reports. “Specifically, Mr. Biden’s plan to hire 87,000 additional IRS agents to crack down on tax scofflaws is estimated to raise only $207 billion over the next decade. The figure is roughly half of the $400 billion that the White House claimed it would raise,” the Examiner says.
Now, the House Committee on Ways and Means is reporting that Americans’ chances of being audited will double after the IRS gets an $80 billion dollar cash injection and hires 87,000 new agents. 1.2 million additional audits are expected —half will hit middle class families making less than $75,000 dollars a year.
“Even the lowest income Americans would see more audits with a quarter of these audits—over 313,000—hitting Americans making up to $25,000 per year,” Ways and Means reports.
Despite the fact that this plan (expanding and empowering the IRS to target more Americans) is incredibly unpopular and won’t come close to making the monies promised, the Biden administration is sticking to its guns.
“There’s wide agreement [the] CBO doesn’t have experience analyzing revenue amounts gained from cracking down on wealthy tax cheats who are taking advantage of honest taxpayers,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said.
You may be trying to crack down on “wealthy tax cheats,” Mr. Bates —but lower and middle income Americans will be unjustly targeted, as well.
And you will hear about it come election time.
