Taxpayer Watchdog Slams Proposed Expansion of IRS Power to Define Journalism and Target Poor

For Immediate Release                                                                                              Contact: Courtney Mattison   (202-525-7492)

September 14, 2021                                                                                                                 

Washington, D.C. – The Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA), a nonprofit, nonpartisan taxpayer and consumer watchdog group is raising the alarm at several provisions related to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in the latest Democratic tax package designed to offset the cost of the proposed $3.5 trillion spending blowout. In particular, three provisions are troubling: Roughly $80 billion in new IRS enforcement resources, mandatory reporting for transactions above $600 by financial institutions, and, perhaps most egregious of all, the IRS defining what counts as journalism.

TPA Vice President of Policy Patrick Hedger offered the following statement:

“A pervasive issue with the economics of government is that poor performance is met with billions of dollars. The IRS is just the latest example of this phenomenon. Congressional Democrats are poised to hand the IRS billions of dollars and vast new powers to snoop on Americans and potentially define what counts as journalism for the purposes of a new local news subsidy.

“From the audits of conservative nonprofits and donors to recent leaks of private tax documents of wealthy individuals, this law enforcement agency has engaged in blatantly politicized moves over the last decade. Now the agency may be empowered to decide what local news outlets are worthy of subsidies, based on whether or not their reporting is in the ‘local public interest.’ It’s not hard to imagine how quickly this will be abused.

“Democrats also want the IRS to have records of every transaction of $600 or more. This is an egregious invasion of Americans’ privacy to be overseen by an agency that just proved it isn’t capable of protecting sensitive information. The IRS just leaked an untold trove of sensitive tax records to ProPublica. Then of course, there are the additional concerns for lower income Americans who already lack acceptable access to financial tools and institutions and are disproportionately the targets of IRS enforcement. This new surveillance regime will only worsen both of these issues.

“Congress ought to be dedicating resources to investigate and overhaul the IRS, not expand the size and scope of this broken institution.”

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Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA) is a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to educating the public through the research, analysis and dissemination of information on the government’s effects on the economy.