Spoiler Alert: The Inflation Reduction Act Is A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

MASSIVE expansion of the IRS raises questions about who they really intend to audit, the billionaires or the middle/lower class. And why does the IRS have over 5 million rounds of ammunition?

Aug 12, 2022

There once was a saying that went “death and taxes”. After the wicked witch of the west (Kamala Harris) cast the deciding vote in the Senate for the $739 billion Inflation Reduction Act, that saying might be revised to go something like “taxes and taxes”. Ironically, the bill is projected to further increase inflation over the next two years contrary to its pretty fluffy name.

On Sunday, August 7, the Senate cast their final vote on H.R. 5376, known as the Inflation Reduction Act. With the vote split 50-50 along party lines, VP Kamala Harris came in to cast the deciding vote. Naturally, she voted to pass the bill and announced as much, cackling as she went. As soon as the bill was passed, the media immediately began the spin cycle, with all of the corporate press calling it the climate and health care bill. (I recommend performing a Google search for “Inflation Reduction Act” and “climate bill” and then compare the results.)

While it is true that the bill includes some measures that will supposedly help in the fight against climate change and aid in health care, it is an abhorrent misrepresentation of what the spending bill aims to accomplish. As Michael Malice often says “The corporate press is factual but not truthful.” This is the perfect way to describe their coverage of the Inflation Reduction Act. They are being factual by calling it the climate bill or health care bill, but it is not truthful because it is not the majority of the bill.

Throughout the bumbling 18 months of Joe Biden’s presidency, he has claimed repeatedly that he would raise taxes, but only on billionaires. You can see when he says such things here, here, here, and here. After claiming this bold billionaire tax repeatedly, the Inflation Reduction Act removes nearly all of the proposed taxes that would target billionaires. At least we can be thankful that the proposed capital gains tax rate of 25% was struck out of the bill. While all income taxes are technically illegal under our constitution, if everyone is going to be forced to pay taxes under threats of audits, fines, violence, and incarceration, it is only sensible that the wealthiest individuals pay their “fair share”.

In the USA, there are only 735 billionaires according to Forbes 2022 annual billionaire list. In the Inflation Reduction Act, $80 billion is allocated towards the IRS. This money is going to be used to hire more than 87,000 more IRS agents, to purchase millions of hollow point rounds of ammo, and more. To keep things clear, Joe Biden wants to raise taxes on 735 people, by paying $80 billion dollars and hiring 87,000 people, and also arming IRS agents because that’s just normal for the tax collector to be carrying. This expansion of the IRS would make one of the most despised government agencies also one of the largest government agencies. The IRS employing 87,000 more people would bring their ranks to 165,661 employees, larger than the Pentagon (27,000), State Department (77,243), FBI (35,000), Customs and Border Protection (19,536) all combined (158,779).

Does the government really need over 165,000 IRS agents to steal more taxes from 735 people? I feel like it would be quite easy for the IRS to simply choose to audit every billionaire rather than receive a 600% increase in funding, doubling their workforce (currently 78,661), and further taxing the middle and lower classes to pay for enforcement of taxes on billionaires. In FY 2021, the IRS performed 659,003 audits on individual income earners. The highest rate of audits was among the lowest income wage earners, at a rate of 13 per 1,000. If it is so easy to perform hundreds of thousands of audits on Americans making the lowest amount of money, it seems obvious that it would be easier to just perform 735 audits on each billionaire in the country. Almost everyone has either been audited by the IRS or knows someone who has gone through the process. It’s horrible, incredibly time-consuming, and is a major violation of your privacy.

I don’t know about you, but I think there might be more here that we aren’t being told. Let’s investigate.

I didn’t read through the entire bill myself because it was around 750 pages. I don’t have the time to read all of that because I am a normal person that has a life, and I highly doubt that every single senator read every word of the bill. However, I skimmed through it and did a keyword search for some phrases, and read a lot of articles and analysis from people whom I trust. One keyword that shows up 682 times in the bill is “tax”, while the words “climate” and “health” only appear 33 and 50 times respectively.

It is ridiculous that every bill going through congress is so long and contains hundreds of amendments, measures, and legislation that are usually completely unrelated to each other. There should be a law passed that every bill to be voted on in congress can only contain one measure. Thomas Massie is frequently criticized for voting against a bill that contains some measure that may or may not be beneficial for the people, but he always comes out and explains that he voted against a particular bill because it includes some crazy policy that is completely unrelated to the stated purpose of the bill. I think I’ll save this for another article, I need to stay focused on the main topic.

The particular section of the bill which deals with the massive increase in the IRS budget is titled “Section 10301 - Enhancement of Internal Revenue Service Resources.” The majority of the over $80 billion appropriated towards the IRS is for “enforcement”. The following excerpt is the section dealing with the funds for enforcement:

(ii) Enforcement.--For necessary expenses for tax enforcement activities of the Internal Revenue Service to determine and collect owed taxes, to provide legal and litigation support, to conduct criminal investigations (including investigative technology), to provide digital asset monitoring and compliance activities, to enforce criminal statutes related to violation of internal revenue laws and other financial crimes, to purchase and hire passenger motor vehicles (31 U.S.C. 1343(b)), and to provide other services as authorized by 5 U.S.C. 3109, at such rates as may be determined by the Commissioner, $45,637,400,000, to remain available until September 30, 2031: Provided, That these amounts shall be in addition to amounts otherwise available for such purposes.

One of the amendments proposed for this bill was one which would prevent the 87,000 new IRS agents from auditing companies and individuals making under $400,000 income. It failed by a vote of 50-50. The results of the vote can be seen below.

While almost no politicians really look out for the interests of their constituents, but rather their wealthy donors and lobbyists, it is clear from the vote on this amendment that at least Republicans don’t want to send the IRS army against lower income earners and small businesses. According to a study from the nonpartisan watchdog group, the Joint Committee on Taxation, between 78-90% of the revenue raised from taxation in this bill would come from businesses making under $200,000 annually. How will these small business deal with these increased taxes? They will raise prices, thus forcing small businesses and subsequently all Americans to pay more of their income as taxation. The Democratic party wants to come after every last dollar that you owe to “pay your fair share.” If you are a waitress at a coffee shop and make a lot of unreported income from tips, here comes an IRS agent, courtesy of Joe Manchin. If you are an independent contractor and you get paid in cash for some jobs and forget to report it, that’s the tax collector knocking at your door, sent by Joe Biden.

Thomas Massie @RepThomasMassie

Do you: wait tables for tips? sell Tupperware at parties? cut firewood for cash? babysit kids? plow driveways in the winter? mow yards on weekends? play music at parties? The Democrats are hiring 87,000 IRS agents to make sure you don’t make a dime without paying Uncle Sam.

One forgotten Treasury Department proposal from last fall was the plan to track personal bank accounts and monitor any transaction over $600. Prior to this, the norm was to monitor any transaction over $10,000. And this was also supposedly another measure to go after billionaires who were avoiding taxes. Yes, you read that right. To make billionaires pay their fair share, the standard for tracking transactions would be dropped from $10,000 to $600. This begs the question of whether this policy proposal was designed as a precursor to this new Inflation Reduction Act, designed to rob the lower and middle classes of their unreported wages.

In another crazy story, it was discovered in a GAO (Government Accountability Office) report that the IRS had purchased and amassed an arsenal consisting of 4,461 firearms (including 15 fully automatic weapons) and over 5 million rounds of hollow point ammunition. In response, Rep. Matt Gaetz proposed a bill on July 1, 2022 to “prohibit the Internal Revenue Service from acquiring ammunition.” I was able to read this entire bill from end to end, because it was a simple bill with only one clear goal. Voting on this bill should not be a problem at all because you either support the IRS purchasing munitions or you want to prevent the IRS from buying munitions, rather than including 250 sections with a thousand sub clauses and amendments. A picture of the bill can be seen below.

While I have only discussed so far the IRS arsenal and massive expansion and the tax provisions included in the Inflation Reduction Act, it is important to note that the bill did include a large number of other provisions. There is a section imposing an excise tax on the repurchase of corporate stock, the appropriation of hundreds of millions towards Tribal and Native Hawaiian Climate Resilience, providing $4 billion for Drought Mitigation in the Reclamation States, and some sections addressing Prescription Drug Pricing Reform. It is clear simply from these few sections that this bill was way too vast and contained completely unrelated sections. When congressmen and women are criticized for voting against a bill that “lowers the cost of insulin”, it also needs to be stated that this 750 page bill also contained hundreds of other sections. It is virtually impossible that any person could read this whole piece of legislation and agree with every aspect of it.

The Inflation Reduction Act may appear on the surface to be a measure to curb the rapid inflation of the last 2 years, but it is no such thing. The corporate press may be dressing it up and calling it “Biden’s climate and health care bill”, but this is a blatant misrepresentation of the true contents of the bill and the effects it will have on Americans. This bill may not raise your taxes directly, but it will raise the prices of your energy, your food, and more. Many individuals on the right are calling to abolish the IRS after the bill. Even many Democrats came out against this bill, as seen by the hashtag #DemExit trending on Twitter in the days after its passage in the Senate, due to the lack of higher taxes on the billionaires.

Finally, it is important to understand that the Inflation Reduction Act (as nearly every bill passed in Congress) is not designed to help you. The majority of the politicians voting on the bill have more incentive to look out for their deep pocket donors rather than you or me. They would not risk losing millions in campaign funds and insider information (looking at you Nancy) for the sake of the good of the American people. It is high time that people realize that Washington bureaucrats don’t care about you and will take advantage of you at every opportunity to retain their power and further themselves. If the IRS comes knocking from $4.38 in unpaid taxes or the FBI comes (without a knock) because you posted a Gadsden flag on Twitter, don’t forget that it is the anatomy of the state which must take and take to remain in power until enough people realize they can simply refuse.

References:

Dead Reckoning

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