IRS on the chopping block on first day of legislative work under Speaker McCarthy

The House is slated to vote on a bill Monday night that would rescind more than $70 billion of funding to the Internal Revenue Service, a top goal of the new GOP majority.

Brooke Singman is a Fox News Digital politics reporter. You can reach her at Brooke.Singman@Fox.com or @BrookeSingman on Twitter.

Smith’s bill leaves in place funding for customer service and improvements to IT services at the IRS, but rescinds several categories of unobligated funding, including money that could be used to conduct any new audits on Americans. In total, it would claw back $72 billion of the funding Congress approved for the IRS last year.

The Inflation Reduction Act granted an $80 billion boost to the IRS over a 10-year period, and more than half of those funds were aimed at helping the agency crack down on tax evasion. In 2021, the Treasury Department estimated that $80 billion would be used to hire 87,000 auditors and other new staff. Republicans have said they would fight this aggressive expansion that would more than double the agency’s current size.