Should the Internal Revenue Service be Abolished or Strengthened?

The Republican-led House of Representatives will soon vote on a bill to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and eliminate the income tax. The bill has virtually no chance of making it through the senate, and President Biden said he would veto such legislation, but the push has ignited discussion on taxes and the efficiency of the IRS.

Weaken The IRS: The Washington Examiner Editorial Board claimed the Biden administration “depends on middle-income earners paying thousands more in taxes than they think they owe, and he’s upset that the House should dare imperil his ability to make it happen.” After the House voted nearly along party lines to repeal the resolution in the Inflation Reduction Act that added 87,000 IRS agents, a writer in the Washington Examiner dismissed frustrations voiced by House Democrats, writing, “as much as they whined, they also didn't do anything about the tax code when they controlled the House of Representatives for the last four years.”

Bolster The IRS: A writer in Newsweek (Center Bias) believes abolishing the IRS would “make it even harder for us to hold some of the wealthiest people in our society accountable for their taxes.” A writer in Bloomberg argues that the IRS requires additional funding to be effective, stating that a dramatic budget increase is needed for the agency to “overhaul its auditing system and have any chance at reclaiming the billions, if not trillions of dollars that go uncollected every year.”