Funding for the Internal Revenue Service proved to be one of the more contentious issues in the recent debt ceiling agreement. Republicans wanted to roll back some or all of the $80 billion in new funding that Democrats enacted in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, while Democrats claimed that less funding for taxA tax is a mandatory payment or charge collected by local, state, and national governments from individuals or businesses to cover the costs of general government services, goods, and activities. law enforcement would mean more tax dodging and less revenue for the government. They settled on redirecting $20 billion of the new IRS funding to other domestic programs
What both parties ignore: The IRS does not need more money for enforcement; it needs fewer things to enforce.
This is a preview of our full op-ed originally published by CNN.
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