Former President Trump repeated a debunked assertion that the IRS has hired 88,000 enforcement agents to go after taxpayers.
In a conversation with Elon Musk livestreamed on X August 12, Trump made the claim as he hit out at presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris for calling for the elimination of taxes on tips August 10 — a proposal he made in June.
“They had just the opposite: They not only had tax on tips, but they hired 88,000 IRS agents, and many of them were assigned to go get waitresses and caddies,” Trump said. He also claimed that the IRS reporting rules on tips released under the Biden administration are hostile to workers that rely on gratuities.
“They were really harassing people horribly, and then all of a sudden, for politics, she comes out with what I had said,” Trump added.
While Trump can rightly claim to be the first of the two candidates to call for a “no tax on tips” policy — he came out with the proposal nearly two months before Harris did — the fear stoked by Trump and some congressional Republicans of the IRS using additional funds secured as part of the Inflation Reduction Act to hire an army of enforcement agents has been discredited.
As of fiscal 2023, the IRS had 82,990 total employees, including approximately 2,100 armed agents in the agency’s Criminal Investigation division.
Trump has sought to use the 88,000 agents claim to bolster his argument for eliminating taxes on tips to stop the IRS from targeting hospitality workers.
Trump said he came up with the idea of not taxing tips after talking to a “beautiful waitress” who lamented the reporting requirements for tips.
Current IRS regulations stipulate that individuals who receive more than $20 a month in tips must report them as income.
While the IRS hasn’t provided any data on tax receipts from tips since 2018, many hospitality industry groups have complained about what they say is increased scrutiny of gratuities.
The largest union in Nevada — Culinary Workers Union Local 226 — held discussions with Harris about supporting a “no tax on tips” policy before she received its endorsement August 9.