(RepublicanInformer.com)- The “Disarm the IRS Act,” which would forbid the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) from obtaining weapons, was presented on July 1 by Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-FL).
Gaetz had previously asserted that the IRS buys ammo for the government for hundreds of thousands of dollars. A conservative news outlet, Breitbart, quoted Gaetz as saying that the IRS spent almost $700,000 on ammo “between March and June 1” in an interview published in June.
Rep. Jeff Duncan (SC-03) of South Carolina co-sponsored the Disarm the IRS Act and tweeted that the IRS had “stockpiled” ammo.
The IRS’s criminal division placed a $696,000 purchase for ammunition between March 1 and June 1, 2022; the IRS informed VERIFY in an email.
The request was for the IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) division, a federal law enforcement organization that looks into offenses including tax evasion, money laundering, cybercrimes, and gang- and drug-related organized crime. The division has more than 2,000 sworn special agents.
An IRS official told VERIFY that many of these crimes are frequently handled in concert with other state and federal law enforcement organizations. Throughout the agency’s more than 100-year existence, special agents with the IRS-CI have carried guns and dealt with some of the most violent offenders,
The IRS’s expenditures on weapons and ammunition from 2010 to 2017 were examined in a study released in 2018 by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). The report’s page 75 is where the data begins.
According to the data, the IRS spent an average of $675,000 on ammo annually between 2010 and 2017. The IRS spent $1,100,000 in 2011, which was the most during that time.
Comparatively, from 2010 to 2017, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, which is in charge of investigations into wrongdoing or fraud inside the IRS, spent $250,625 on ammo annually on average.
Over the same period, the U.S. Marshals Service spent almost $3.2 million on ammunition yearly.
The GAO informed VERIFY that no more recent statistics on the IRS’s annual expenses exist.
So, we can confirm that between March 1 and June 1, the IRS did purchase approximately $700,000 worth of ammo, but it was done to outfit their criminal section and is nothing new.
