You don't need us to tell you not to trust the goddamn IRS, but we'll tell you anyway. Some things to know: the IRS is three to five times (!) more likely to audit Black taxpayers than others due to its tendency to go after those claiming the earned-income tax credit. The bureau has also disproportionately targeted low-income tax payers rather than focusing on making billionaires pay appropriately. As a, uh, reward, the IRS has received $80 billion to spend to remake itself into a more modern evil bureaucratic agency.
What might change? The Biden administration has nominated Daniel Werfel to be its new commissioner. Werfel was acting commissioner nearly 10 years ago and he's supposed to help implement the Biden White Houses's plan for "improving the agency’s woeful customer service and technology while ensuring that wealthy taxpayers and big corporations pay the taxes that they owe." Excuse us if we're skeptical that will ever happen, even with $80 billion in resources.
Republicans are grilling the candidate even as we write this; unsurprising given how the IRS has over the last decade become a political football that has been accused of targeting conservatives even as it failed to audit Donald Trump's tax filings, going against its own long-established policy.
Will the IRS still be shady if Werfel gets the gig? Probably.
Will it change for the better? Maybe, possibly. It certainly can't get much worse.
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