Weeks before midterm elections, Republicans warn of an army of 87,000 IRS agents that will harass Americans

For weeks, Republicans have been telling voters across the country that President Joe Biden and Democrats will be sending an army of 87,000 IRS agents to audit everyday Americans, to dig deeper into their pockets to pay for unfunded liberal programs like student loan forgiveness.

In August, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen sent a memo to IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig directing the agency to deliver a plan within six months on how the funding will be used over the next decade.

"Any additional resources—including any new personnel or auditors that are hired—shall not be used to increase the share of small business or households below the $400,000 threshold that are audited relative to historical levels," she wrote in a letter.

Of the $80 billion in funding – nearly $46 billion was allocated to go toward enhanced enforcement as the IRS looks to close the so-called "tax gap," which currently stands at an estimated $600 billion annually and $7.5 trillion over the next ten years.

Some of the technology used by the agency dates back to the 1960s.

In both reports and testimony before Congress, Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins has described IRS employees having to manually enter information line by line from paper returns.

She has called paper returns "kryptonite" in numerous warnings to Congress.

Her midyear report in June stated the agency had a backlog of 21.3 million unprocessed paper tax returns at the end of May.

23, including 4.6 million paper returns to be reviewed and processed.

The agency is working with the same number of auditors dealing with complex work as it had in World War II

The criminal investigation unit is a small division within the agency with less than 2,000 employees – less than 3% of total workforce.  And within that unit, only special agents are armed, so even fewer than the 2,000 employees working there