We have all recently heard that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is hiring 87,000 new agents and have seen the various reactions to this news. As tax attorneys, we have received more than our fair share of ice-breaker comments on what this means for us and how busy we will be. What this doesn’t mean is that 87,000 IRS agents are going to come break down your door and force you to allocate for all of your Venmo accounts on the spot. Ordinary taxpayers have no idea what actually goes into hiring a single IRS agent, let alone 87,000 agents over multiple years to try to reduce the labor backlog.
Most people think that hiring 87,000 IRS agents is a large amount and that they will be pumping out business and individual audits at an unprecedented speed. What most people do not understand is that this 87,000 has to be spread across hundreds of IRS departments, meaning 87,000 is a small number for a federal agency that has been severely understaffed for years. It can take, on average, two years for an auditor or collection agent to be released into the wild and have taxpayer contact; most of the time, that individual will not make it through the rigorous two training program, which means that only a fraction of those 87,000 will make it to the finish line.
Regardless of the above commentary, it really will be a great move for the IRS to hire all these individuals regardless of whether they adequately plug all the staffing holes at the IRS. Further, owing to the nature of the staff shortage and the recent ramp-up of audits of top earners, this will hopefully bring some balance to the individuals and businesses flying under the radar because there is no ability for the IRS even to audit a fraction of the taxpayers in the United States. If the IRS can pull off its hiring spree, it is projected to collect an additional $10 billion or more in revenue.