Dem
47
GOP
53
Donald Trump's control of the Department of Justice to punish his enemies is scary enough, but he has found a new weapon that could top that: the IRS. Even Richard Nixon understood that one of the government's greatest powers over citizens and groups he didn't like was taking away their money. Trump has rediscovered that and is about to ramp it up.
There is the routine stuff, of course, like auditing the hell out of his enemies and bringing down the hammer for the smallest technical violation of the tax law. But he is getting interested in going way beyond this and planning to use the IRS Criminal Investigations Division (IRS-CI) to go after his "enemies." Prosecutions resulting from IRS-CI investigations can result in prison time as well as fines. The IRS-CI division pursues not only tax evasion, but also employment tax violations, gambling, money laundering, narcotics-related crime and various kinds of financial fraud. IRS-CI agents can not only investigate alleged crimes, but also perform law enforcement functions, including conducting searches, seizing property, and taking testimony under oath. When it has discovered a financial crime, it turns it over to the DoJ for prosecution.
Under the current rules, there are a number of safeguards built in. Two different levels of management have to review a proposed case before it can go forward, and four different levels have to approve before a case can be turned over to the DoJ for prosecution. Trump wants to change the rules to make it much easier to prosecute anyone—in particular, his enemies. He is also planning to replace the IRS-CI chief, Guy Ficco, an IRS careerist who has been there for decades, with a toady who will do Trump's bidding and go after his enemies, both to punish them and to intimidate everyone else into submission. By stripping career civil servants of their authority and concentrating power at the top, he will be able to use IRS' power to go after his enemies, whether or not they have committed any crimes. In case anyone missed the message here, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on a podcast last week that tracking down any left-wing financial networks connected to Charlie Kirk's assassination is "mission critical." Really? IRS could not function unless all the financial networks somehow connected to Kirk's assassin are tracked down and obliterated? Of course, it is very likely that there was a lone gunman with no support from anyone, so IRS-CI may be tasked with inventing some networks out of thin air and then going after them.
One expected target is Democratic megadonor George Soros and his Open Society Foundation. Trump would dearly love to close that organization down. That would deprive the Democrats of a lot of money. All that would take is getting a list of organizations the OSF had donated to, declaring one of them to be a terrorist organization, and then charging Soros and the OSF with supporting terrorism. Rinse and repeat with other organizations that help Democrats until there are none left.
The IRS is already in bad shape and may get even worse as Trump starts monkeying with it. There have been 7 (!) IRS commissioners in the past 10 months. The current (acting) IRS commissioner is none other than Scott Bessent, who also has a full-time job running Treasury. He realized that he was stretched thin, so he created a new job, the CEO of IRS, and appointed Frank Bisignano to it. But since Bisignano also has a full-time job (running the Social Security Administration), IRS doesn't exactly have full-time leadership. Changing the rules to concentrate more power at the top will probably lead to career officials leaving. It turns out private tax firms just love hiring people with years of experience at IRS. Having new rules, no leadership, and big gaps lower down is probably not going to lead to honest and efficient tax administration. To a considerable extent, the U.S. tax system, in which only 1-2% of returns are audited, depends on voluntary compliance. People do this because they believe IRS is honest and fair. When that assumption goes by the wayside, compliance could go way down, with various bad effects. (V)