In this article, former Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Commissioner Larry Gibbs considers how the Inflation Reduction Act's (IRA) new funding boost will help the IRS deal with its many challenges. Gibbs provides the background of IRS funding in recent years, discusses the steady decline in IRS resources and the substantial increase in IRS workload in the face of ever increasing tax noncompliance over the last ten-plus years, lays out another context in which to understand the importance of our revenue system and the IRS in light of our national debt that now exceeds our Gross Domestic Product, and describes the importance of the unique revenue raising capability of our income tax system as administered by the IRS in light of our spending propensity by our politicians. Gibbs urges the politicians to take a bipartisan approach to curtail their spending propensities in order to spend less, reduce our annual deficits, lower our national debt, and support our income tax system and the additional funding of the IRS. Gibbs concludes that while spending may be required to meet the requirements of our government today and in the future, our present fiscal situation should limit our borrowing and should require us to spend responsibly. Responsible pending, he concludes, necessitates a responsible revenue raising capability that is best provide by an adequately funded IRS. 

Gibbs delivered these remarks at the Florida Tax Institute on February 2.