Republicans have clawed back part of the funding allowing the agency to chase after millionaires for unpaid taxes.
In less than a year, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has been able to capture over $1 billion in unpaid taxes, the agency announced on Thursday, due to its new campaign targeting wealthy tax cheats.
As part of new funding provided by Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act, the agency has targeted 1,600 people with incomes over $1 million who owed more than $250,000 in taxes, the agency said. Just since last fall, the amount that the agency has collected from 1,200 people in this group has topped $1 billion — and the agency expects that figure to grow in coming months.
The figure represents an “important milestone,” Commissioner Danny Werfel said, for the IRS’s fight against tax dodging by the wealthy — an incredibly prolific practice that has grown in recent decades due to the right’s funding cuts to the IRS, which have severely hampered the agency’s ability to ensure tax compliance from the wealthy.
