IRS Finance
Additional funding has been approved for the IRS: Approximately $80 billion will be phased in over ten years for the IRS as part of the recently enacted Inflation Reduction Act. According to a Treasury Department analysis from May 2021, that amount of extra cash would enable the organisation to hire about 87,000 new personnel by 2031. Over the next ten years, there will be an increase in the number of employees in various sectors, including IT and customer service.
That announcement quickly became a “new army of 87,000 IRS agents” as a result of tweets like this one from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).
Two days later, the debate heated up on social media with tweets stating things like, “We don’t need 87,000 armed IRS agents,” and “$80B for armed IRS Agents.”
thousands of armed IRS officers? That was undoubtedly a disturbing idea. But even that wasn’t accurate. It began with a factual story, much like the additional IRS funds.
Hiring IRS
You can read more about the IRS’s plans here. The IRS is hiring. The organisation had been posting job ads even before the new law. An advertisement for a special agent in the IRS’s criminal investigation served as the catalyst for the most recent flurry of social media posts. The job description makes it obvious that a candidate would be required to carry a gun and might find themselves in circumstances that call for the use of force.
The sound of it is unnerving. But that isn’t a novel approach. On this, I questioned the IRS. The phrase was typical 1811 job announcement, according to Justin Cole, director of the Office of Communication for IRS-CI, who also confirmed that it was not specific to the IRS. He claimed that it is normal wording used by the government as a whole when recruiting 1811s.
Positions that include organising and carrying out investigations into actual or suspected infractions of criminal laws are included in the 1811 federal criminal investigator classification series, which was created by the US Office of Personnel Management. This includes positions with organisations like the IRS, the Federal Bureau of Investigations, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Tax Offenses
The job description has nothing to do with standard civil enforcement procedures like audits. It is only related to the CI, or criminal investigations, arm. Over a century has passed since the IRS established its criminal division. The IRS is the only federal agency that has the authority to look into possible criminal violations of the Internal Revenue Code, whereas other federal agencies like the FBI may pursue financial offenders. Several of their most recent cases and top priorities are described below.
We often assume that tax crimes, such as overstating deductions and underreporting income, only take place on paper when it comes to taxes. These actions can actually be against the law; you can read more about tax offences here.
But it frequently involves more. Don Fort, a former IRS-CI Chief, once remarked that “most crimes are financially motivated.”
Cases of IRS Criminal Investigation
Think about one of history’s most notorious gangsters, Al “Scarface” Capone. Despite having been credibly charged with bribery, intimidation, and murder, the authorities struggled for years to prove major charges against Capone.
The first head of the IRS Intelligence Unit (later IRS-CI), Elmer Irey, was called before the Treasury secretary in 1928 and instructed to “get Capone.” We’ll get right on it, Irey allegedly responded. Johnny “The Fox” Torrio and Al Capone would eventually be imprisoned by Irey’s division, which J. Edgar Hoover’s more flamboyant FBI G-Men had failed to accomplish.
The fight against drugs has also shown the value of IRS-CI training. The Medellin cartel, allegedly in charge of 80% of the cocaine trafficked into the US in the 1980s, was led by Pablo Escobar, “The King of Cocaine,” at the time. Because of his 11 years of experience as a CI agent, Robert Mazur was instrumental in the effort to bring down Pablo Escobar. He was aware that Escobar, like many other criminals, had a financial weakness.
In the same decade, the IRS collaborated with other organisations like the FBI, US Customs Border Protection, and the US Drug Enforcement Administration on prominent drug and money-laundering cases like Scheme Polar Cap, which led to the collapse of a $1.2 billion operation. 127 individuals and two Latin American banks were ultimately prosecuted in the case. The time was the “biggest money-laundering crackdown ever carried out by the federal government,” according to Attorney General Dick Thornburgh.
IRS Special Agent Scott Schneider and his CI colleagues went to Baghdad after Saddam Hussein was overthrown in Iraq in order to find Hussein’s illegally obtained wealth. The Treasury Department claims that billions of dollars were recovered.
Both crime and crime combating have changed throughout time.
The Justice Department declared in 2020 that it had stopped three cyber-enabled terrorist financing activities. All of these terror campaigns—conducted by the al-Qassam Brigades, the military branch of Hamas, al-Qaeda, and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant—relied on sophisticated cyber-tools, including the solicitation of cryptocurrency payments from all over the world.
The campaigns’ money was laundered through cryptocurrency accounts, which IRS-CI helped find and seize. They are the biggest cryptocurrency seizures related to terrorism ever made by the government.
The largest child pornography site on the dark web had been taken down, according to IRS announcements made months before. The IRS-CI claims that due of their previous work on dark web markets, agents were aware of the Welcome to Video website. In addition to making hundreds of arrests, the operation freed at least 23 young victims who were being abused by site users and lived in the US, Spain, and the UK.
Criminal investigation by the IRS today
The IRS-CI is currently the sixth-largest US law enforcement organisation. Approximately 70% of the 3,000 employees at CI are special agents, and only these agents are allowed to carry weapons.
Identifying Fact From Fiction
I’ve sat on the side of the audit table that the IRS wasn’t on. It can be really frightful for taxpayers. I understand that when your finances are involved, the stakes are tremendous.
Read more:-
- Conservative Leader Expected 87,000 More IRS Agents After 2013 Strike
- Elizabeth Warren Proposes Drafting Tax Returns Under the Inflation Reduction Act
- Check Out the States That Will Be Mailing Payments for State Tax Rebates in 2022 Below
The idea that armed IRS officials are pursuing you and I makes for an even more exciting tale. But that’s not the case.
You don’t need to like the IRS. Furthermore, you are not required to support handing them extra money. However, you should arm yourself with the facts when discussing what the IRS actually does—and what it does not—do.
