27-02-2025
We're Turning Down Free Money by Firing IRS Workers
In 1982, a year after shepherding President Ronald Reagan's tax cut — the biggest ever — through the US Senate, Republican Bob Dole decided something had to be done about the resulting increase in the federal deficit. That something was the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982, which closed income-tax loopholes and increased excise taxes on cigarettes and phone service. It also provided billions of dollars in new funding for 'improved enforcement' by the Internal Revenue Service.
'As chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, my obligation is to make certain that everybody pays the tax they owe before we go back and ask people to pay more tax,' Dole explained at the time. Give the IRS enough resources, his reasoning went, and you could collect more taxes without increasing the burden on law-abiding taxpayers. This philosophy was to hold sway for the rest of the Reagan years, with the number of IRS employees increasing 39% from 1982 to 1988.
