If the IRS sends its agents to the limit here is the work that is not being done

Days ago, President Trump suggested that he be able to fire employees at the Internal Revenue Service – or send them to the border and tell an audience at Circa Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, “they employed or tried to hire 88,000 workers to go after you and We are in the process of developing a plan to either end them all, or maybe we move them to the border. In the IRS-Criminal Investigation (CI) department, it seems that at least some IRS workers are likely to be redirected to immigration enforcement.

The Department of Homeland Security has asked tax secretary Scott Bessent to deputy IRS agents to help with the efforts to crack down on immigration. A 7th February letter sent out of DHS secretary Kristi Noem to Bessent suggests that IRS workers could help DHS revision of employers charged with hiring illegal immigrants and investigating human trafficking. These skills appear to be aimed at CI workers, and Noem repeatedly mentions “law enforcement” staff. However, she does not specify CI and asks for help with certain functions that employees outside the criminal department are now performing, such as contract monitoring, monitoring civilian docks and execution of “financial audits of companies suspected of hiring illegal immigrants.”

Noem wrote in the letter: “It is DHS’s understanding that the Ministry of Finance has qualified law enforcement staff available to help with immigration enforcement, especially in the light of the recent increases in the Internal Revenue Service’s workforce and budget.” This help may include “building complex cases that mix taxes, immigration and money laundering.”

Building complex cases is in line with what CI does – both CI -special agents (about 2,000 employees authorized to carry guns), and CIS 1,000 support staff, including various analysts, are involved in such a case development.

CI is the sixth largest law enforcement agency in the United States It is the criminal investigative arm for the IRS responsible for investigating financial crimes such as tax fraud, trafficking in drugs, money laundering, public corruption, health care and identity theft. While other federal agencies also have investigative jurisdiction over money laundering and some banking secret violations, IRS is the only federal agency that can investigate potential criminal violations of the tax code.

But much of what Noem says she wants help with does not reflect what CI employees are trained to do. These tasks include helping with “internal immigration enforcement, including picking up withholding facilities by foreigners according to the criminal program (CAP) and helping with the Institutional Hearing Removing Program (IHRP)” and “Handling of the non-detected docket, including foreigners who is enrolled in the alternatives to detention program and monitoring of foreigners reporting to ICE field offices for immigration observations and responding to alarms that have been complied with, among other functions. “

NOEM says she will approve any law enforcement officials that Treasury designates to perform the functions of an immigration manager, including “Examination, determining the location of and indicating any foreigner in the United States in violation of section 8, Chapter 12 or rules issued under this. “

IRS expenses and hiring

It’s not exactly tax work. And the reference to the extra funding is clearly a fine -tuning on the agency. For the past several years, IRS expenses have been a target for Republicans in Congress. It accelerated after the 2022 Inflation Act earmarked almost $ 80 billion in appropriations to the Agency (House’s vote for the bill was 220–207, with all Democrats voting for and all Republicans who voted against it). The extra money was intended to help the IRS pick up 87,000 new workers – including customer service and IT workers – in the next decade. However, the statements became weapons in the public arena, suggesting that the IRS armed all its workforce.

About CI

In the financial year 2023, the IRS used 82,990 full -time equivalent positions to do its work (a decrease of 9.1% since the 2013 financial year). About one -third of the workforce forces on archiving and account services (26,878), while others tackle jobs in areas such as exams and collections (31,599) and information services (6,689).

IRS-CI is approx. 4% of the total amount. Today, IRS-CI staff are about 3,200 with almost 2,200 sworn officers. These sworn officers are armed. However, former IRS CI chief Jim Lee says they should be as they “work some of the most dangerous cases” out there and emphasize their work tracking of criminals.

These armed agents – ci -sore agents – are sworn federal law enforcement authorities beginning to educate at the National Criminal Investigation Training Academy (NCITA) in Brunswick, Georgia. Special agents are trained in interviewing, collecting evidence, using evidence and making recommendations for prosecution.

Professional staff includes researchers and a digital forensic team that supports special agents in the collection and analysis of digital evidence. In the last financial year, CI seized over 1.7 Petabytes of digital data to support studies (for context, Petabyte is 1,000,000 gigabytes (GB), approximately enough to store 200 million 5 MB photos). The digital forensic team is working to recover relevant evidence, including data that may be encrypted, password -protected or hidden with other electronic means.

Most CI resources are focused on tax crimes. Last year, the agency focused approx. 70% of its time on tax crimes, including scams of tax refund, identity theft, cybercrime, fraud and public corruption. CI used approx. 11% of his time on drug cases as part of the organized crime treatment group, while the remaining time (17%) was divided between general fraud and money laundering.

In the financial year 2023, CI initiated 2,676 investigations and recommended 1,838 cases for prosecution. The resulting prison rate was 79%and the average sentence was 48 months.

According to former CI managers and current staff, this work deterres tax crimes and ensures voluntary compliance with taxpayers. A study from 2024 found that approx. 85% of the tax for tax years 2021 and 2022 were paid voluntarily and on time. In the 2023 financial year, the IRS collected nearly $ 4.7 trillion in gross fees.

Potential losses

Some in the agency fear that moving agents away from this work would reduce compliance and lower collections. The Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy (Itep), a non-profit, nonpartisan think tank, shares these concerns. Itep claims that taking IRS agents from the complex tax collection cases for which they are trained and where they are skilled would reduce the amount of treasures that the agency can collect – less enforcement means that more spotlaws would avoid detection .

By 2023, then-IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel noted that CI with IRA money closed several cases where wealthy taxpayers were convicted of tax evasion, money laundering and filing of fake tax returns. Specifically, Werfel announced that the IRS had successfully pursued 175 criminal tax cases for millionaires, generating $ 38 million in recovery – a few months later the agency noted that compliance with the effort had generated More than 1 billion dollars In collections.

At that time, Werfel referred suggestion that an “army of IRS agents” was out to shake down everyday taxpayers. But he said, “This is unmistakably not the case.” There is, he noticed, “no mythical army of the IRS agents on the streets – that is really the opposite,” with reference to a political change that ends the most unannounced visit to the taxpayer of the agency’s income manager.

Studies from Congressional Budget Office and Government Accountability Office have found that additional resources for IRS tax enforcement efforts have increased government litters. Itep says these resources also help states and local authorities, as most state and local income taxes Piggyback on federal rules and benefits from improved federal compliance. Direction of tax enforcement resources against enforcement of the immigration law would itep claim, increase the federal budget deficit and damage state and local budgets.

There is another reason why Itep thinks that switching IRS workers into immigration work is a bad idea: Taxpayers are already afraid of the Agency and the move could, Itep, make it worse. This distrust of the government, especially the IRS, would be particularly acute in neighbors with undocumented populations. According to an ITEP analysis, at least 10 percentage points in tax compliance among the undocumented population, tax revenue would fall by $ 9.5 billion annually-with $ 8.6 billion coming from federal boxes and an additional $ 900 million from States and sites.

(And if you don’t think immigrants pay tax Other studies. According to a 2023 analysis from the Cato Institute, when they account for incomes, paid taxes and government services, immigrants can be a net positive for the economy as they pay more in taxes on average than they receive in state benefits of federal, State and Local Government Level.)

The IRS refused to comment on the letter and the Treasury did not respond to a request for comment. But indications are that the Agency is stiffening for significantly more changes after the tax season closes. Tax Day is April 15, 2025.

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