The Internal Revenue Service and its 87,000 new agents are "working aggressively" to target the money of hard-working Americans, even after the House voted in legislation after Republicans took over to defund the agents' hiring, Rep. Ben Cline said on Newsmax on Friday.
"One of our first actions in the new Republican Congress was to remove the funding for those employees and agents, but it's over in the Senate now and [Senate Majority Leader] Chuck Schumer is sitting on it," Cline, a Virginia Republican, said on Newsmax's "Wake Up America."
Meanwhile, the agents are investigating tips, Venmo payments, and more, said Cline.
"Young people aren't carrying a lot of cash," said Cline. "They're using Venmo. This is the latest way in which the IRS is seeking to take more of the money of hard-working Americans. It's not just folks over $400,000, like Joe Biden says. It's you, me, everybody on Main Street."
The IRS said in late December that it will delay until next year a controversial requirement that would have required Venmo, Paypal, or Cash App, among other payment platforms, to send 1099-K tax forms to anyone receiving over $600, CBS News reported.
By current rules, the services only have to report people who had more than 200 payments for more than $20,000 in revenue.
Cline noted that many people, such as GrubHub drivers, are tipped through apps, and that will be taxed.
"The bureaucracy and the lengths to which people are going to have to go to keep track of the tips that are online that are being collected by apps, it's going to be overwhelming for just your average employee of a delivery system or a waiter or waitress to have to keep track of it all," said Cline. "These gig economy workers are really going to be under the foot of the IRS."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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