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Few differences between Democrats and Republicans are sharper than their approaches to the Internal Revenue Service. Republicans believe the IRS’s priorities should be fairly administering the law and keeping Americans’ interactions with the agency simple and few, which was a central achievement of our 2017 tax-reform law. Democrats seem to value revenue above efficiency or accountability and are intent on creating a far bigger and more intrusive enforcement-focused agency. With the narrowest of majorities they have implemented radical changes to the IRS while refusing to provide accountability and oversight. If Republican majorities take Congress, that will change.

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Like the Obama IRS, President Biden’s has been marked by political bias, management failure and a lack of accountability. These pages have called attention to last year’s massive breach of taxpayer privacy, when personal data ended up in the hands of the left-leaning news site ProPublica. It’s been nearly 17 months since that improper disclosure was used by ProPublica, as well as the administration and Democrats in Congress, to advance a wish list of liberal tax policies. Yet there has been no accountability for the breach or demand for answers from Democrats in power. At best, that’s a reckless lack of oversight; at worst, it condones an outrageous violation of America’s privacy rights.

If the GOP takes the Senate in the midterm elections, that won’t stand. Using the chamber’s committee gavels, we will hold hearings, investigate wrongdoing, and bring administration officials before Congress to provide answers to the American people. There will be no more sidestepping accountability.

We won’t stop with the data breach. A Republican majority would make sure that IRS reform focuses first on the treatment of taxpayers, at which it is notoriously terrible. In 2021 the agency answered 11% of the 282 million phone calls it received. Yet less than 5% of the $80 billion Democrats gave to the IRS in the Inflation Reduction Act was dedicated to improving customer service. Instead, the bill, passed along party lines, prioritized squeezing more revenue for Green New Deal-style policies, with more than half of the IRS money going to enforcement.

That’s why Sen.

Susan Collins

(R., Maine) and I have crafted a bill that would force the IRS to meet basic customer-service thresholds—such as answering the phone—before the agency can use any of its new money to hire more enforcement agents.

Democrats talk about their intent to shield middle-income Americans from their new auditing regime, but all 50 Senate Democrats rejected an amendment Sen.

Mike Crapo

(R., Idaho) proposed to the Inflation Reduction Act that would do just that. Without a protection in law, the IRS’s new enforcement money is bound to make middle-income Americans’ lives harder—it’ll be enough to hire four new enforcement agents for every town in the U.S. But if Republicans take Congress, Mr. Crapo’s provision would be able to prevail in the form of a new bill he and I wrote barring any of the new IRS funding from being used to audit taxpayers who earn less than $400,000.

And when the Senate returns to session after the midterm elections, one of my first orders of business will be introducing legislation with Sen.

Chuck Grassley

(R., Iowa) to give Congress a direct say in how these new IRS funds are used. If our bill becomes law, the new IRS funding will be frozen until the agency presents a coherent plan to Congress for how it would be used. If Congress disagrees with what has been proposed, the plan can be rejected through a newly created resolution of disapproval.

Our bill would also force the IRS to comply with a consistent and strict reporting process so that the agency is transparent with the Americans funding it. The IRS received a sum equal to six times the agency’s 2022 budget under the Inflation Reduction Act; taxpayers deserve to know where all that money is going. If the IRS fails to meet reporting deadlines, portions of the new funding would be automatically rescinded on a daily basis until the agency complies. If there’s one way to get a federal agency to pay attention, it’s by tightening the purse strings.

One more seat in the Senate and a few in the House are all that Republicans need to provide real accountability to taxpayers and help ensure that an IRS agent doesn’t unnecessarily come knocking on your door.

Mr. Thune is a U.S. senator from South Dakota, Republican whip and ranking member of the Finance Subcommittee on Taxation and IRS Oversight.

Review & Outlook: Analysis from the Congressional Budget Office, Syracuse University and the National Taxpayer Advocate suggest Democratic Party claims that only high earners will be squeezed in the IRS audit expansion are false. Images: Getty Images Composite: Mark Kelly

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