Ways and Means chair calls for de-weaponization, overhaul of IRS after 'lawless' behavior

FIRST ON FOX: House Ways & Means Committee Chair Jason Smith is calling for a implicit overhaul of the Internal Revenue System, demanding the bureau beryllium de-weaponized, and telling Fox News Digital that "business arsenic accustomed astatine the IRS is unacceptable." 

Smith, R-Mo., wrote a missive to IRS Acting Commissioner Douglas O’Donnell connected Thursday, calling for ongoing oversight of the bureau to guarantee it takes steps to "rebuild trust" with Americans aft "lawless and politically motivated behavior." 

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"The communicative of the past 2 years astatine the IRS is 1 of some nonaccomplishment and outright weaponization of the bureau driven successful portion by the Democrats’ determination to prioritize hiring 87,000 caller IRS agents to audit moving families implicit providing basal lawsuit services," Smith told Fox News Digital. "There are excessively galore examples of problems astatine the IRS to count." 

In the letter, exclusively obtained by Fox News Digital, Smith lays retired concerns astatine the agency, including its alleged retaliation against the 2 IRS whistleblowers who brought claims of corruption and preferential attraction for Hunter Biden — Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler. 

Smith besides pointed to the IRS’s enactment for $80 cardinal successful mandatory backing that prioritized "aggressive audits implicit lawsuit service," the "failure to instrumentality assertive enactment against tax-exempt organizations that person caused antisemitic chaos connected assemblage campuses, successful American cities, and those that whitethorn beryllium supporting terrorism" and more. 

"Aggressive oversight of the IRS continues to beryllium a apical precedence for the Committee, and the predetermination results made it wide that the American radical are looking for accountability," Smith wrote. "President Trump has shown successful his archetypal 3 weeks that helium meant what helium said during the statesmanlike campaign." 

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Smith said the authorities "has not been moving efficaciously for the American people, and it needs to change." 

"We volition beryllium watching intimately to marque definite that the IRS timely complies with each laws, enforcement orders, absorption from the caput of the Treasury, and requests from the House Committee connected Ways and Means and the Senate Committee connected Finance," Smith said. 

Smith told Fox News Digital that the bureau has "acted extracurricular its authorization by refusing to use the instrumentality erstwhile it hurts Democrats, similar successful the lawsuit of delaying the unpopular $600 Venmo reporting law, and by promoting Democrat interests without authorization, similar erstwhile it turned a tiny feasibility survey into a monolithic Direct File programme costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars." 

"We cognize that the IRS has retaliated against the 2 brave investigators that blew the whistle connected preferential attraction for Hunter Biden," Smith said, pointing to Shapley and Ziegler.

"Business arsenic accustomed astatine the IRS is unacceptable," Smith told Fox News Digital. "The acting commissioner needs to cleanable things up rapidly to conscionable the expectations of the committee and the American radical person of the agency."