The Post went on to report that the IRS had fired “7 percent of its roughly 100,000-person workforce in February, including at least 5,000 in the enforcement and collections divisions,” and that “tax experts say the cuts undermine the agency’s much-touted effort to crack down on wealthier Americans — who for years have faced slimmer and slimmer odds of being audited."

The Trump administration’s hobbling of the agency follows years of attacks on the IRS by right-wing media — most notably by spreading a myth that the Biden administration was planning to hire 87,000 armed agents to investigate and persecute conservatives. A Biden-era law did increase funding for the IRS, but didn’t specify the number of new employees and certainly didn’t mandate that they carry weapons. The false number comes from a Treasury Department report that suggested how many total employees the IRS could hire over 10 years to “maintain current levels,” according to PolitiFact. And, crucially, the new hires were tasked with investigating high-income tax avoiders.

Right-wing media attacked Biden-era funding for IRS to go after wealthy tax cheats

In August 2022, Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law, adding $80 billion to the IRS’ budget to go after wealthy tax cheats. That month, Fox News repeated the falsehood that the IRA added 87,000 IRS agents more than 200 times, including at least 40 instances of falsely saying the agents would be armed.

Host Laura Ingraham said the IRS was the “new Gestapo,” and host Brian Kilmeade claimed “Joe Biden’s new army” is going to “hunt down and kill middle class taxpayers.” (In fact, then-Treasury Secretary Janet Yellin instructed the IRS not to increase audits for filers making less than $400,000 annually.)

Former Fox News marquee star Tucker Carlson repeated the armed-agents conspiracy theory at least nine times, in one instance telling his audience Biden was hiring “87,000 armed IRS agents to make sure you obey.” Earlier that month, Carlson falsely claimed that the IRS was being used “as a military agency."

Turning Point USA founder and MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk said on his radio show that the “87,000 new IRS agents will be used to go after mom-and-pop restaurants, donors to MAGA candidates, people like you,” and that their assignment was to target “dissidents."

Fox ignored IRS collection of back taxes from the wealthy — while demonizing immigrants

The attacks continued throughout the rest of Biden’s term. In January 2023, right-wing outlets rehashed the 87,000 armed-agents myth as House Republicans voted to slash IRS funding. That fall, conservative pundits cheered on newly minted Speaker of the House Mike Johnson’s attempts to cut IRS funding. On November 20, Ingraham again accused the IRS of “targeting conservative groups."

In February 2024, Fox News almost entirely ignored a report from the IRS and the Treasury Department that found the agency was “poised to take in hundreds of billions of dollars more in overdue and unpaid taxes than previously anticipated,” according to The Associated Press. As Media Matters reported at the time, Fox spent only 5 minutes discussing the report — which estimated the government would be able to collect $56 billion per year over 10 years — and 55 minutes criticizing a New York City program to provide migrants with prepaid credit cards that cost $53 million.

Right-wing media pushed tax avoidance for the ultra-rich, austerity for the working class

The long-running right-wing media campaign against the IRS has always had one clear goal: to protect the ultrawealthy from IRS enforcement. The Trump administration is now realizing that goal. The recent Washington Post article reported that a West Virginia revenue agent said some of the recently “laid-off employees had about 40 cases between them, each looking at people making $400,000 or more.” Some reports now estimate that the Trump administration could ultimately fire half of the IRS’ 100,000 person workforce.

The programs that Trump is eviscerating have already been successful. As of last July, the IRS had collected more than $1 billion in back taxes from wealthy individuals and families. Right-wing media figures have cheered on these cuts, which will primarily benefit rich tax cheats, as they simultaneously push for austerity measures for the working class.