IRS hopes to replace fired enforcement workers with AI | “I believe through smarter IT, through this AI boom, that we can use that to enhance collections.”

From the article: Following considerable cuts to its enforcement workforce, the US’s Internal Revenue Service (IRS) plans to use AI to supplement its ability to collect taxes from US citizens.

News of the IRS’s plan came from US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent during a House Appropriations Committee hearing Tuesday to discuss the Treasury’s budget proposal. (The IRS is a subsidiary of the Treasury.) When asked by Congressman Steny Hoyer (D-MD) whether proposed reductions in the IRS’s IT budget, along with plans to cut additional staff, would affect the agencies ability to collect tax revenue, Bessent said it wouldn’t, thanks to the current “AI boom.”

“I believe through smarter IT, through this AI boom, that we can use that to enhance collections,” Bessent told Hoyer and the Committee (24:29 into the video linked above). “I expect collections would continue to be very robust as they were this year.”

Bessent’s comments didn’t explain how the IRS intends to deploy AI. Given how much it has slashed its enforcement staff since Trump took office, the agency definitely needs to do something.

The Treasury Inspector General’s office issued a report last week on IRS workforce reductions as of March indicating that more than 11,000 IRS employees (approximately 11 percent of the Service’s workforce) had been terminated since Trump’s Office of Personnel Management began directing government agencies to cut jobs.

Revenue agents, whose job it is to audit tax returns for accuracy, made up the bulk of those fired. Those cuts affected 31 percent of the IRS’s revenue agent workforce. Revenue officers, who are responsible for collecting delinquent taxes, were the second-most slashed position, with 18 percent of collections officials at the IRS fired during the layoffs.

People are going to ignore the robo calls, and when they get audited, they are going ignore the robo auditors.

Prompt: “Find the smallest of infractions, ignore anyone making over 400k a year because they have good lawyers”

We all know that when Elon Musk instructs his employees to make this AI, he will make them include bias so that he and his family never get audited.

The moment Trump realizes what keeps the US economy running is all the “waste and overregulation” it will be too late. With the lack of proper industries, the money only flows across the country because it is forcibly pumped.

I am not saying it should be like that, but you look at healthcare spending and realize GDP would drop if it were universal, then think “well, all those pointless jobs actually result in personal spending and economic activity”.

True, some of that flows into China. Some stays.

Ag yes, you’ll get the enjoyment and fury that comes with an automated phone assistance, but with the consequences of messing up your taxes and owing big time. 

To be clear, they weren’t fired by AI. This administration had no plans for how to replace fired federal workers, they just wanted to fire federal workers because they think career people who do their job under many administrations are plotting against them.

What this means is that they are going to just aggressively place liens and garnishments automatically and you’re going to have to jump through several more hoops (if they are even available) to come to some sort of settlement with the IRS.

At the end of the day, things will just get harder for average folks.