Dems unleash the IRS against middle America

 Monica Showalter:

Just how bad is the Biden administration's and Democrat Congress's grossly misnamed "Inflation Reduction Act" of 2022?

The Wall Street Journal has a shocking lead editorial titled "The IRS Is About to Go Beast Mode" about the particulars of its $80-billion expansion of the IRS:

The $80 billion is more than six times the current annual IRS budget of $12.6 billion. The money will be ladled out over nine years and comes with few strings attached. The main Democratic command is for the tax agency to bring the hammer down on taxpayers.

The bill earmarks $45.6 billion for "enforcement," including "litigation," "criminal investigations," "investigative technology," "digital asset monitoring" and a new fleet of tax-collector cars. The result will be far more audits, civil suits and criminal referrals.

The main targets will by necessity be the middle- and upper-middle class because that's where the money is. The Joint Committee on Taxation, Congress's official tax scorekeeper, says that from 78% to 90% of the money raised from under-reported income would likely come from those making less than $200,000 a year. Only 4% to 9% would come from those making more than $500,000.

The IRS knows the super-wealthy employ lawyers and accountants who make litigation time-consuming and risky. It also knows that Democrats would howl if the agency pursues fraud in the earned-income tax credit program, despite what the IRS has estimated are $18 billion in improper payments each year.

So the target will be the middle class, particularly small business start-ups, whom Joe Biden would like to see a lot less of.  They're the entities about to be audited up the wazoo.

The Journal points out that customer service will not improve under this new money-gusher, and the government isn't actually running short on cash from taxpayers:

The new wave of audits will hit taxpayers even as tax revenue as a share of GDP is back close to its historic norm of 18.5% and may be going higher as corporate and individual tax revenue soars. Tax receipts were up 25% in the first nine months of fiscal 2022 after rising 18.3% in fiscal 2021.

The federal government isn't starving for revenue. Congress wants more tax revenue because it can't control its appetite for spending. That's why it wants a tax agency in beast mode.

So instead of improving the tax system by simplifying it, as in "low flat tax," and kickstarting the economy so that revenues flow in, the Bidenites are going for the Full Lenin — crushing the middle class.

Here's the word from their master, who understood how to obtain power: "The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation."

...

The Democrats are living up to their reputation as the party of government greed.  American voters should rise up against the greedy Democrats.  They apparently believe that the way to cure inflation is to take away money from workers so they have less to spend.