The Tax Times: Is The IRS' Underfunding an Accident or Is It Intentional?

Wednesday, February 9, 2022

Is The IRS' Underfunding an Accident or Is It Intentional?

According to Law360 the House of Representatives approved a stopgap federal government funding bill on February 8, 2022 that would keep the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the Internal Revenue Service and other federal agencies open through March 11, 2022.

The Further Additional Extending Government Funding Act, or H.R. 6617, which passed the House by a 272-162 vote, is intended to give House and Senate negotiators time to complete work on an omnibus budget bill for the remainder of fiscal 2022, House Appropriations Committee Chair Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., said.

President Joe Biden signed the current continuing resolution into law in early December as well as an earlier short-term funding bill that Congress passed in late September, narrowly averting a government shutdown.

The Continuing Resolution Bills Maintain Government Funding At Their Current Levels, Thereby Putting Pressure On Lawmakers To Work On An Omnibus Budget
With Updated Spending Priorities.

House Ways and Means Committee ranking member Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, said he faulted the Biden administration for not taking the backlog in unprocessed tax returns more seriously, despite the fact that it has unspent money in its budget from the emergency pandemic legislation that it could have used to address problems.

"They're not prioritizing returns. Unfortunately, they've been distracted by their push for 80,000 new IRS agents" and their proposal for IRS surveillance of personal bank data, Brady told reporters ahead of the House vote. "I think that's the major mistake that is biting taxpayers today."

The topic of IRS funding and the tax return processing backlog also came up during a hearing of the tax panel's Oversight subcommittee, where Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, said that Democrats have been pleading for a bigger IRS budget since the administration of former President Barack Obama, when Republicans were in control of the House.

"Treasury officials were coming to our committee and their pleas were rejected," Doggett said during the hearing. "This lack of resources is not an accident. It was intentional by those who wanted the IRS to fail."

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