Senators Urge IRS to Focus on Big-Time Tax Cheats, Citing ProPublica Stories
Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and three fellow senators say the agency should do more to tackle financial crimes, even in the face of crippling budget cuts.
by Paul Kiel and Jesse Eisinger March 8, 11:09 a.m. EST
In a letter on Friday , a group of prominent senators — including Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., 2020 presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., as well as Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. — urged IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig to increase the agency’s focus on large tax and financial crimes.
As ProPublica has documented with a series of articles, the IRS is a shadow of its former self, the result of a near-decadelong campaign by Republicans in Congress to starve the agency of funds. The agency’s enforcement staff has dropped by more than a third. That has been a boon to the rich and to tax cheats in particular, who have benefited from a collapse in audits, collections and criminal tax prosecutions.
As we reported, and as the senators noted in their letter, the story has been different for the poor, as the IRS has devoted a disproportionate number of its audits to taxpayers who receive the earned income tax credit, one of the government’s largest antipoverty programs.
The senators acknowledged that the budget cuts have badly weakened the agency, but they argued that ProPublica’s stories, together with government watchdog reports, show the IRS could use its limited resources more effectively.
https://www.propublica.org/article/bernie-sanders-elizabeth-warren-urge-irs-financial-crimes
