President Biden wants to give the IRS an extra $80 billion to target mega-rich tax evaders to help fund his “American Families Plan” legislation, according to a report Tuesday.
The proposed cash would come with new powers to aggressively crack down on wealthy people hiding money from the government, including new disclosure requirements, two sources told the New York Times.
The $80 billion would be a two-thirds increase over the agency’s entire funding levels for the past decade — but is hoped to raise at least $700 billion on net over 10 years, the report said.
As with his plan to raise the capital gains tax, Biden will portray it as leveling the playing field between typical Americans and the small number of very high earners who minimize or avoid paying taxes, the report said.
It will be used to help pay for his “American Families Plan,” which he will detail before addressing a joint session of Congress on Wednesday.
That plan is expected to cost at least $1.5 trillion and include universal pre-kindergarten, a federal paid leave program, affordable child care and free community college for all, the Times said.
“This isn’t the first time an administration has said, look, let’s spend the money to do enforcement and we’re going to get multiplier of returns,” Bloomberg News editor-at-large Marty Schenker said.
“For every dollar you spend on IRS enforcement, you get $10 back … that’s been basically the argument over the last three or four decades,” he said, echoing White House economic adviser Brian Deese’s claim that it “only affects 0.3 percent of taxpayers.”
“But getting it through Congress is another matter,” he said.