A proposal to strengthen IRS enforcement to crack down on tax scofflaws and help fund a nearly $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure spending bill is officially off the table, Republican Sen. Rob Portman said Sunday.
Portman, who is involved in negotiating the bill, cited “pushback” from fellow Republican lawmakers who dislike the idea of expanding the reach of the IRS, which they have accused over the years of unfairly targeting conservatives. He said another reason the IRS provision was shelved is that Democrats are including a more robust enforcement plan in a separate $3.5 trillion infrastructure bill that they intend to pass through the Senate using special budget rules and without Republican votes.
“That created quite a problem because the general agreement is that this is the bipartisan, negotiated infrastructure package and that we will stick with that,” the Ohio senator said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Portman’s announcement that the IRS provision had been removed underscores the difficulty facing the bipartisan group of Republican and Democratic senators in finding mutually agreeable ways to pay for billions of dollars of new spending their White House-backed plan calls for.
Portman said meetings were planned Sunday to discuss alternatives to the IRS provision, which had been estimated to bring in an estimated $100 billion over 10 years. The proposal to go after taxpayers who skip out on income taxes initially had potential bipartisan appeal, but outside groups came forward to lambaste it as a way to enable the IRS to snoop around Americans’ personal finances.
IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig said at a congressional hearing in April that the national gap between federal taxes owed and actually collected is about $1 trillion annually, more than double what official government estimates have previously indicated.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is pressuring lawmakers to reach agreement this week on the pair of massive domestic spending measures, signaling Democrats’ desire to push ahead aggressively on President Joe Biden’s multitrillion-dollar agenda.
Schumer, D-N.Y., said last week that he is scheduling a procedural vote for Wednesday to begin debate on the still-evolving bipartisan infrastructure bill. Senators from both parties, bargaining for weeks, have struggled to reach final agreement on a $1 trillion package of highway, water systems and other public works projects.
Portman on Sunday called that an “arbitrary deadline” and one that was premature given that senators haven’t even agreed on details of the “complex” bill yet.
“We want to get it right. It’s not too much to ask that we have time to do that,” Portman said. “We ought not to have an arbitrary deadline forcing this process.”
Schumer said he also wanted Democratic senators to reach agreement among themselves by Wednesday on the specific details of a separate 10-year budget blueprint that envisions $3.5 trillion in spending for climate change, education, an expansion of Medicare and more.
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So Republican senators oppose allowing the IRS from going after tax evaders to collect revenue the federal government is legitimately entitle to because they believe – without citing any evidence – the agency has in the past “targeted” conservative taxpayers. Two thoughts. First, how do the senators know who the so-called targets of the IRS were, given that taxpayer information is confidential and not available to members of Congress? Second, if true, is it possible that conservatives – who tend to think taxation is both excessive and abhorrent – might therefore be naturally inclined to cheat on their taxes? I know more than a few right-wing types who proudly brag about cheating on their taxes the odds that they will never be caught. They may be right, if only because Republican senators in Congress have their backs and enable their evasions to occur without consequence. The rest of us pay more to make up that difference,
There are people gaming the system on both sides of the aisle…if we had a less onerous taxing system without all the loopholes we could all pay our “fair share” (whatever that is…)
And to your first point, see below from the NPR:
IRS Apologizes For Aggressive Scrutiny Of Conservative Groupshttps://www.npr.org › 2017/10/27 › irs-apologizes-for-ag…
Oct 27, 2017 — In a legal settlement that still awaits a federal judge’s approval, the IRS “expresses its sincere apology” for mistreating a conservative …
Ah, yes, Brent B; those evil Republicans, conservatives, and right-wingers! If only the country was rid of all of them, it would be so much better off, right?
See also: Revolt against communism in Cuba.
‘Tell you what; how about if we trade one-for-one? Any person who is so enamored with an even larger government that repressive conservative thought through jack-boot IRS enforcement, gets traded to Cuba for one Cuban citizen who longs to be free of that collectivist mindset. Who you volunteer to be traded?
Cuba? The future of an America that doesn’t take tax collection seriously is Greece.
Under collection of taxes is just as bad as spending more than is collected. And it does seem odd that law and order Republicans don’t see properly funding the IRS … as a priority. They’re more concerned with going after people who receive government assistance who commit paperwork errors than going after willful tax cheats.
https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-irs-was-gutted
The IRS “apology” for “targeting” conservatives was not in any way connected to the issue of tax evasion. Rather, it concerned the granting of tax exempt status to overtly partisan political organizations on both the right and the left.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy
Whatever is taxed, there will less of that. Whatever is subsidized, there will be more of that.