The reduction would be the latest in a string of decreases to the tax agency’s budget. It got $80 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act for enforcement, technology improvements and taxpayer services in 2022, but Republicans have since pushed to claw back much of that money.
“Congress has been pulling back money from the IRS over the last several years, somewhere in the range of about $41.7 billion,” said Rep. Dave Joyce, R-Ohio, who chairs the subcommittee with jurisdiction over the Treasury and the IRS.
“Some may ask, ’What's left to cut from the IRS?’” he continued, asking Bessent to talk about “why streamlining operations will benefit taxpayers and not hurt them.”
“The IRS is 30 years behind, 30 years behind on an IT modern modernization project where perhaps up to $50 billion of taxpayer money has been wasted. We are rightsizing that. So the substantial decrease in the IRS budget [is] largely in IT. We have had a large number of employees take the option for early retirement or for retirement,” Bessent replied. “We are just taking the IRS back to where it was before the IRA bill substantially loaded the personnel and the infrastructure.”
During the Biden administration, the IRS used the 2022 funding bill to staff up to over 100,000 employees following years of staffing cuts. The Trump administration, meanwhile, has sought to shed employees across the government, including from the IRS.
So far, the agency’s workforce has shrunk by 11%. But the IRS is republicans question trump budget
