IRS to Set Up ‘Centralized Office’ for 87,000 New Agents

The Internal Revenue Service will establish a centralized office to implement elements of the tax and spending bill that President Joe Biden signed last week, including almost 87,000 new IRS agents, the agency’s chief says.

Democrats’ bill, which passed the Senate and House without a single Republican vote, provides $80 billion to the Internal Revenue Service, largely to pay for the 87,000 new agents through 2031. 

In an email message Friday to all IRS employees, a copy of which was obtained by The Daily Signal, IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig wrote:  “This is a historic time for the IRS, and we are working to move quickly to begin work on the Inflation Reduction Act signed into law earlier this week.” 

Rettig wrote:

Our efforts will include the creation a new central office to manage all IRS-related provisions. Building off our successes implementing other major legislative bills, the IRA 2022 Transformation & Implementation Office will work across the IRS and oversee our implementation efforts.

The House and Senate voted on party-line votes to pass the bill which allocates $79.6 Billion to expanding the IRS boost revenue to pay for Democrats’ pet programs. 

According to estimates, 57.3% Treasury Department’s estimated 86,852 new IRS agents—or fewer than 50,000—would be assigned to tax enforcement. 

The new centralized IRS office will be responsible for  “substantive tax provisions as well as the significant transformation efforts,” Rettig said in a separate message to employees Thursday. 

The IRS commissioner stated that Nikole Flax, deputy commissioner in charge of the Large Business & International Division, will lead the establishment of the agency’s centralized office.

“We have a unique, once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform the IRS in a way to help taxpayers and fundamentally improve our tax administration work that is vital to the success of our country,” Flax is quoted as saying in Retting’s Friday memo. “This is an exciting opportunity, and we will be moving quickly with our work.”

In an email, an IRS spokesperson stated that separate IRS offices were established to implement both the Tax Cut and Jobs Act of 2017, also known as Trump’s tax cuts, and the Affordable Care Act of 2010 better known under the name Obamacare. 

A spokesperson for the agency stated that they could not estimate the number of employees who will be working in the new office. 

Biden and congressional Democrats claim that no one earning less $400,000 per year will be subject to new taxes. However, other analysts predict that the package will impose a $4500 tax increase on the average American in the next ten years. 

Rettig stated that the IRS would soon provide more information about the new office in the coming days. Rettig wrote Friday to employees:

Five subsidiary offices will support the new office, which will be focused in specific areas, due to the broad scope of the new legislation. They will focus on the following areas: implementation new tax law provisions and taxpayer services transformation, tax compliance Transformation, human capital transformation and communications and outreach. The new office will collaborate closely with the business units in order to implement the act and with IT to align modernization efforts.

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