IRS misses Friday deadline to turn over $80 billion spending plan

The IRS will not meet the Friday deadline imposed by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to turn over its spending plan for approximately $80 billion that Congress budgeted for it to spend over 10 years as part of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, P.L. 117-169.

In an email to the JofA on Thursday afternoon, IRS spokesman Eric Smith said the agency has been working to prepare the Strategic Operating Plan and “expects to deliver the plan to the Secretary in coming weeks.”

That means the IRS will miss the deadline that Yellen set in a letter dated Aug. 17, 2022, and sent to Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo. In that letter, Yellen said a “six-month operational plan detailing how these resources will be deployed over the course of the next decade” was crucial. She directed that the plan be sent to her in six months, or by Feb. 17, 2023.

Specifically, she told the IRS “to work closely with the Deputy Secretary to identify specific operational initiatives and associated timelines that will improve taxpayer service, modernize technology, and increase equity in our system of tax administration by pursuing tax evasion by those at the top who today do not pay their tax bill.”

The failure to meet the deadline comes on the heels of the confirmation hearing held Wednesday for Danny Werfel, nominated by President Joe Biden to be the new IRS commissioner. Werfel said during the Senate Finance Committee hearing that the plan would allow the public “to connect the dollars from the [Inflation Reduction Act] to the various activities and investments in the plan,” ABC News reported.

The JofA emailed a Treasury spokeswoman for comment.

— To comment on this article or to suggest an idea for another article, contact Martha Waggoner at Martha.Waggoner@aicpa-cima.com.