The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) said Tuesday that it was undertaking a thorough evaluation of safety at its locations in response to an increased number of threats resulting from rumours that agents were planning to aggressively target middle-class taxpayers.
President Biden this week signed bills relating to taxes, healthcare, and the environment into law, which includes $80 billion in financing for tax-collection activities. Although Janet Yellen, the secretary of the Treasury, expressly instructed the agency to not concentrate its attention on middle-class taxpayers, false information quickly disseminated online that agents were going to target all taxpayers regardless of income level.
Threats against IRS employees followed the false claims that the IRS would provide guns to workers who had the legal right to use lethal force.
The leadership of the agency has now started to look at agency security.
Regarding the 600 offices around the country where the IRS has offices, Chuck Rettig, the commissioner, stated, “We are doing a thorough evaluation of current safety and security procedures.”
He said that this included doing risk assessments while keeping an eye on perimeter security, designated restricted areas, outside illumination, security at facility entrances, and other policies.
“This is personal to me. I’ll keep working hard to debunk any remaining misconceptions about our work, “Rettig said in a letter to staff members on Tuesday.
And in any setting when I am in front of an audience, I will keep fighting for your protection.
Rettig, whose tenure at the IRS expires in November, has been given the duty of creating a strategy for using the additional funding provided by the Inflation Reduction Act.
High-ranking Republican lawmakers have disseminated lies about the IRS staff and how the newly allocated cash will be used in addition to anonymous web forums.
Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, a Republican, urged Americans in an open letter on August 16 to refrain from joining the IRS, despite erroneous reports about available jobs at the organisation and employees’ access to weapons.
In the letter, he said that the IRS was “clearly making it obvious that you not only need to be ready to audit and probe your fellow industrious Americans, your neighbours, and friends, but you also need to be ready and, to use the IRS’s words, willing, to murder them.”
The National Treasury Employees Union’s president, Tony Reardon, said that members have been outspoken about their anxieties and concerns for their safety.
“The people who work for the IRS undertake the task of supporting the government, and they are undoubtedly extremely honest and hardworking.
They contend that they shouldn’t be seen as the government’s opponent “said he.
He continued by saying that due to the increased focus on their jobs, members who are of retirement age have expressed a greater desire to retire.
More than half of the 80,000 employees who work in IRS enforcement are eligible for retirement.
Reardon said that a number of employees had mentioned being reminded of the 2010 Austin, Texas, suicide bombing in which Andrew Joseph Stack III flew a single-engine aircraft into the Echelon office building, killing Vernon Hunter, the IRS manager, and himself.
Reardon said that the language being used at the moment was harmful. “It puts these brave Americans in danger.”