WASHINGTON — IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel has a message for high-wealth tax cheats who are wrongly deducting private jet travel and otherwise shorting the government on their taxes: Pay your fair share so “others aren’t shouldering the burden of funding our government.”
“We’re kind of like the NFL referee — when we get the call right or wrong, we get booed, and we’re OK with that,” Werfel said. “We have some myth-busting to do,” Werfel said, referring to alarmist and inaccurate Republican claims that the agency plans to hire 87,000 armed agents ready to harass middle-income earners.
Last year’s debt ceiling and budget cuts deal between Republicans and the White House resulted in $1.4 billion rescinded from the agency and a separate agreement to take $20 billion from the IRS over the next two years and divert those funds to other programs. And this past January, a debt ceiling deal meant to avoid a government shutdown frontloaded the full $20 billion cut to this year.
The Direct File rollout has drawn some consternation from commercial software firms like Intuit, as well as Republicans who argue there are free filing programs that already exist.