“I think we ought to fight an epic, knock-down, drag-out fight over stopping the Democrats from funding 87,000 new I.R.S. agents to harass and intimidate and persecute Americans and their political enemies.”
Democrats are also doubling down on the findings. Representative Richard E. Neal, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, has introduced legislation that would require the I.R.S. to publish presidential tax returns, audit them “in a timely manner” and update the public on the results. The House passed the legislation on Thursday, though it appears to have little prospect of passage by the Senate.
The Biden administration has emphasized its ambitions of modernizing the antiquated technology at the I.R.S. and improving its customer service. In an August memo laying out how the money would be deployedTreasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said the agency would be focused on cracking down on rich tax dodgers and big companies that have long evaded paying what they owe to the federal government.
She also promised that middle-class households would not face more onerous scrutiny and that their audit rates would not rise.
“These investments will not result in households earning $400,000 per year or less or small businesses seeing an increase in the chances that they are audited relative to historical levels,” Ms. Yellen wrote. “Instead, they will allow the I.R.S. to work to end the two-tiered tax system, where most Americans pay what they owe, but those at the top of the distribution often do not.”
The revelations about Mr. Trump’s audits laid bare the difficulty that the I.R.S. has had in auditing the rich. The former president proved to be particularly uncooperative, as his team failed to provide facts needed to resolve certain issues and threatened to protest or appeal the process.
The process of auditing Mr. Trump apparently even grew contentious. An internal I.R.S. memo detailed by the committee said, “There has been some animosity between our counsel and taxpayer’s counsel.”