The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced its intent to hire 3,700 new employees to “help with expanded enforcement work focusing on complex partnerships and large corporations.”

“These compliance positions will be open in more than 250 locations nationwide and is part of a larger effort to add fairness to the tax system and expand tax enforcement involving areas of concern with high-income earners, partnerships, large corporations and promoters,” an IRS press release stated.

“The hiring will be for higher-graded revenue agents, which are specialized technical positions that generally focus on audits.”

“Known officially as Internal Revenue Agents, these specialized positions are for mid-career professionals with specialized experience and education. These are higher graded positions at the General Schedule GS-13 level in the federal civil service system, which translates into an annual salary of about $125,000,” the press release added.

The hiring effort is part of the Inflation Reduction Act funding approved in August 2022.

“This is another important step for the IRS as we work to transform the agency and make improvements,” said IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel.

“Our first wave of hiring focused on taxpayer service positions to help improve our phone and in-person assistance. This next wave of hiring will help the IRS add key talent like tax accountants to help reverse a decade-long decline of audits for the wealthy as well as complex partnerships and corporations. These new employees will be focused on higher-income and complex tax areas like partnerships, not average taxpayers making less than $400,000.”

IRS to hire 3,700 new employees to audit the wealthy https://t.co/ZD6bA5IIX6

— The Washington Times (@WashTimes) September 15, 2023

The Washington Times reports:

The IRS is on a hiring spree after Congress last year approved tens of billions of dollars of new money for the agency over the next decade. The goal is to collect enough from taxpayers to pay for some of President Biden’s plans to address climate change.

The IRS previously hired new customer service employees, trying to fix an agency that in recent years failed to answer most taxpayer phone calls and, when it did pick up the phone, often left people on hold for up to half an hour.

After some progress this last tax season on those yardsticks, the agency is turning to the enforcement side of the ledger.

The IRS said the new hires, in addition to averaging $125,000 in salary, can get an addition $50,000 in other benefits such as student loan repayment plans, $5,000 for child care and $3,600 for mass transit expenses. The agency also said employees can telecommute.

The IRS also intends to expand a pilot program that utilizes artificial intelligence to target the largest partnerships in the United States.

IRS to Use Artificial Intelligence to Enforce Tax Compliance

The program is part of funding provided by the Inflation Reduction Act.

“Capitalizing on Inflation Reduction Act funding and following a top-to-bottom review of enforcement efforts, the Internal Revenue Service announced today the start of a sweeping, historic effort to restore fairness in tax compliance by shifting more attention onto high-income earners, partnerships, large corporations and promoters abusing the nation’s tax laws,” the IRS wrote in a statement.

“The effort, building off work following last August’s IRA funding, will center on adding more attention on wealthy, partnerships and other high earners that have seen sharp drops in audit rates for these taxpayer segments during the past decade,” the statement continued.

“The changes will be driven with the help of improved technology as well as Artificial Intelligence that will help IRS compliance teams better detect tax cheating, identify emerging compliance threats and improve case selection tools to avoid burdening taxpayers with needless ‘no-change’ audits.”