Florida Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis bashed President Joe Biden for creating an “army” of new IRS agents, and warned they will target Floridians.
Patronis is also offering a four-point plan for lawmakers to adopt in an effort to blunt the force of Biden’s IRS expansion.
“Biden just signed into law a bill that supercharges the IRS. An expansion of the IRS? No one asked for this,” Patronis said in a statement Tuesday after Biden signed the misnomered Inflation Reduction Act.
“It will target Florida. He should have just stayed on vacation. It spends $80 billion and funds 87,000 personnel to shakedown small businesses and the middle class. I know they’re going to target Florida, so I’ve put forward four proposals to throw their red tape right back in their faces.”
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Patronis in a recent statement called his measure the “IRS Protection Plan,” which is built on four “pillars.” They include:
- Requiring state-chartered banks to share regular reports on IRS engagement. This would help identify IRS targets, so the state can help fight discrimination against taxpayers, especially in the middle class and small business owners.
- Establishing a “Civil Liability Trust Fund” to help small business owners defend themselves. That includes allowing them to sue the IRS in cases of “politically motivated” audits or federal overreach. Patronis said his hope is to create “a chilling effect for IRS agents to bring cases.”
- Creating a state-level license so new IRS agents must register to access financial account information. This license would help the state scrutinize IRS operatives and “examine their backgrounds and motives to protect Florida consumer information.” The list would be publicly available.
- Imposing criminal penalties for enforcing laws based on viewpoint or political discrimination. Patronis noted the IRS targeted Tea Party groups under former President Barack Obama. “No doubt the IRS under the Biden Administration would do the same to many businesses and organizations in Florida who have professed a love of freedom,” he said. “Florida must force IRS bureaucrats to think twice before once again targeting conservatives.”
“When we get new leadership in Washington, this $80 billion for 87,000 IRS agents should be withdrawn and redirected to paying off debt or funding more border agents,” said Patronis.
“Let’s not be coy – these agents will target red states, like Florida. They are coming here. They are coming after us.”
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He noted that in just one year Florida added almost $24 billion in gross adjusted income from refugees from states like New York, New Jersey and California. California alone accounted for $18 billion of that.
“Financially speaking, Florida is eating their lunch. In a last-ditch effort to slow capital from flowing to the Sunshine State, the Biden team is building an army of IRS agents to shakedown our middle class and our small businesses to fund their government coffers,” Patronis said.
“It is out-of-touch and an aggressive overreach of government power. We saw this movie already in 2013 when the IRS politically targeted audits of tea party groups and their donors. And, we all know that the sequel is always worse than the original. Florida must act now. I look forward to working with lawmakers on these policy proposals in the weeks and months ahead.”
He added, “For years I have seen liberal Democrats say with a straight face that small business is the backbone of the American economy, but … they voted to create a large army of IRS agents to aggressively target these hardworking American employers. Now we know that they were lying when they said they loved small businesses.”
“Even though the free state of Florida cannot control the insanity of Washington, we must do what we can to protect our small businesses.”
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