The IRS announced Monday it would stop surprise visits to homes and businesses beset by political backlash after a series of questionable house appearances and whistleblower allegations of political bias.
IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel said he hoped to increase “public confidence” in the agency by ending the practice of making unannounced visits to taxpayers’ homes and businesses “except in a few unique circumstances.”
The agency instead sends letters to schedule meetings.
“We are reviewing how the IRS works to better serve taxpayers and the nation, and making this change is a wise move,” Werfel said in a statement.
“Changing this longstanding procedure will increase confidence in our tax administration work and improve overall security for taxpayers and IRS employees.”
Werfel, who ran the agency for four months, said he wanted to rebrand the IRS and end the public perception that the agency goes door-to-door to collect taxes.
IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel said he hoped to increase public “trust” in the agency by ending the practice of making unannounced visits to taxpayers’ homes and businesses “except in a few unique circumstances.”
Werfel also said that scammers go door-to-door posing as IRS agents and confusing taxpayers, and that agents have been put in unsafe situations when they show up at a property unannounced.
The National Treasury Employees Union, representing IRS agents, praised Werfel’s decision to cut back on unannounced visits — claiming agents had been the target of “false, inflammatory rhetoric” and such visits were sometimes unsafe.
The agency has been subject to political attacks from Republicans after the Inflation Reduction Act allocated it $80 billion to hire some 87,000 new agents.
In the recent debt ceiling agreement approved by the House and Senate last month, Congress voted to reclaim funding for the IRS. Negotiators agreed to two annual cuts of $10 billion in IRS funding, including an immediate dissolution of $1.4 billion in “non-mandatory balances.”
The IRS has said it will use the new funding to target high-earners — and claimed the audit rate for middle-income people won’t rise to anything above “historic levels” — but hasn’t defined that benchmark.
Audit rates have dropped to a 1 in 1,000 chance for those making less than $100,000. In 2010, those chances were seven times as high.
Monday’s policy change also comes after the IRS raised eyebrows by sending agents to journalist Matt Taibbi’s home late last year, the same day he was scheduled to testify before Congress about social media censorship.
The IRS said it had tried to verify that Taibbi was not a victim of identity fraud. Taibbi owed no money and was in fact owed a refund by the agency. The House Judiciary Committee launched an investigation into the incident.
Under the old policy, the IRS made tens of thousands of home and business visits a year, mostly to collect tax debts in excess of $100,000. The visits were intended to send a message that the IRS was closely monitoring taxpayers.
Now they will only send agents in case of subpoenas, subpoenas or asset seizures – usually less than 200 a year.
The National Treasury Employees Union, representing IRS agents, praised Werfel’s decision to reduce unannounced visits — alleging agents had been the target of “false, inflammatory rhetoric” and such visits were sometimes unsafe
About 2,000 unarmed tax officials are typically tasked with making the unannounced visits to discuss taxes owed or missing returns. The criminal department, which employs armed agents and pays unannounced visits in case of suspicions of criminal tax evasion or money laundering, is not affected.
Republicans also cried viciously after a strange incident in Ohio where an IRS agent used a fake name to gain entry to a woman’s home.
The agent, who identified himself as “Bill Haus” with the bureau’s criminal division, unexpectedly showed up at a taxpayer’s home in Marion, Ohio, on April 25.
The taxpayer let Haus into her home after informing her that he was there to “discuss matters relating to an estate for which the taxpayer was the fiduciary.” However, she had not received any notice from the IRS prior to the visit.
Once inside, the agent revealed that the “true purpose” of his visit was unrelated to the estate, but that she reportedly had “several delinquent tax returns.”
As a result, the Ohio woman called her attorney, who immediately asked the agent to leave, but Haus responded “aggressively, insisting “I’m an IRS agent, I can be at someone’s house and go in at any time.”
After Haus left, the woman contacted Marion police to determine if the visit was a “scam,” who, after checking his car’s license plates, determined that the officer was using a fake name — but he was a legitimate IRS agent.
Meanwhile, Special Agent Joseph Ziegler, a 13-year veteran of the IRS, and Gary Shapley, a longtime IRS investigator, blew the whistle on violations of IRS investigative standards, claiming they had felt handcuffed while investigating Hunter Biden’s tax crimes.