U.S. IRS to hire nearly 20,000 staff over two years with $80 bln in new funds

The U.S. Internal Revenue Service plans to hire nearly 20,000 new employees and deploy new technology over the next two years as it ramps up an $80 billion investment plan to improve tax enforcement and customer service, it said on Thursday .

The tax agency, in its long-awaited Strategic Operating Plan, said it will obligate about $8.64 billion of the new funding during the 2023 and 2024 fiscal years, and that 7,239 of the new hires during those years will be enforcement staff.

"The IRS is going to hire more data scientists than they ever have for enforcement purposes," U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo told reporters, adding that these would complement more traditional tax attorneys and revenue agents in using new data analytics technology to identify audit targets.