Welcome back once again Show Mo Facts readers! Early in-person voting starts tomorrow. If you don’t know where your polling place is, or you have any other questions about voting, you can find all of those answers here. Voting is your duty as an American citizen so make sure you make a plan to vote!
Today our blog post is focusing on someone we haven’t fact-checked before. We are going to be looking at a Tweet sent out by current US Representative Jason Smith. Smith is running for re-election in Missouri’s Eighth Congressional District, which covers all of southeast Missouri. Check out the map below to see if you live in Smith’s district and if he will be on your ballot when you vote!
In his Tweet, Smith claims that President Biden plans to double the number of IRS agents and that they will be harassing working-class Missourians in an attempt to raise revenue. Smith then goes on to claim that this can be stopped if “we FIRE PELOSI” implying that people should vote for Republicans like himself. Let’s break down the two major claims in this Tweet. First that President Biden plans to double the number of IRS agents, and second that these agents will target working-class people.
Claim: Biden’s plan will double the number of IRS agents
Fact: This claim has been a main Republican talking point going into the midterm elections. Republicans like House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy have claimed that Democrats plan to hire an “army of 87,000” IRS agents. This is untrue. The Inflation Reduction Act signed by President Biden did include $79.6 billion in funding for the IRS, however that funding is over a ten-year period. Additionally, that money is going to be used to replace the expected 50,000 workers that are expected to retire over the next five to six years. The projected net increase in IRS personnel will only be about 30,000 in the next ten years, roughly bringing the number back up to before the agency’s budget was severely cut. Moreover, not all of those agents will be responsible for the enforcement of tax policy. The misleading 87,000 figure that many Republicans are citing comes from a May 2021 Treasury Department report about what the IRS could do with $80 billion in funding, not what it will do.
Claim: These agents will target working-class people
Fact: Smith is using this claim as a fear tactic, which is one of the most powerful motivating forces in elections. Smith is trying to scare Missourians by making them believe that an army of IRS agents is coming to audit them. This is not true. IRS Commissioner, Charles Rettig, said in a letter to Congress that the agency will be using the additional funding to target corporations and people making over $400,000. Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, concurred with this in a letter sent to Retting writing, "contrary to the misinformation from opponents of this legislation, small business or households earning $400,000 per year or less will not see an increase in the chances that they are audited”. This $400,000 mark is well above $70,784, the national median household income in 2021. It is also well above the median Missouri household income which was $57,290 in 2021. Smith is lying when he says that the IRS is planning on targeting working-class people. The increase in IRS personnel is only going to make sure that high-income-earning corporations and individuals are paying their fair share.
The claims Smith makes in his tweet fall under the definition of fake news which James Ceaser and his colleagues identify in their book Defying the Odds: The 2016 Elections and American Politics as, “deliberatively falsified or distorted online news stories that go viral within political communities of the left or right”. This intentionally misleading IRS story has largely been running on right-wing websites like Breitbart and InfoWars and has been spreading on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter despite having been proven false by several independent fact-checkers. Right-wing opinion leaders, like Smith, continue to promote this story, despite it being demonstrably false because they think it will be beneficial to them in the November midterms.
Missourians deserve the truth from their elected officials. Leaders like Smith should make sure that Missouri residents have access to high-quality news information and they should not intentionally spread fake news. Due to Smith’s mischaracterization of the number of new IRS agents, his lies about agents targeting working-class families, and his propagation of fake news, we rate this Tweet as CATASTROPHIC on our Pants on Fire O-Meter.
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