The IRS not only has to develop its spending plan, it will also have to implement it.
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Democrats call that absurd.

“It’s unbelievable that we even need to say this, but there are not going to be 87,000 armed IRS agents going door-to-door with assault rifles,” said Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).

To cut through the rhetoric, here are five things to know about the $80 billion in IRS funding included in Democrats’ recently approved health care, climate and tax legislation.

An auditor on every doorstep?

The Biden administration wants to use the money to hire 87,000 people, a hiring spree that has Republicans warning of a gathering army of tax collectors.

Republicans are taking that figure from a chart buried in a report the Treasury Department issued last year on its plans for the agency, but here’s the thing: It doesn’t actually say how many examiners it intends to bring on.

The administration was very specific about how many people it wants to hire each year, but it hasn’t provided many details about what all those people would be doing.

Many will surely be examining returns. That’s been a big emphasis for Democrats, and Congress earmarked more than half of the IRS money — $46 billion — to beef up enforcement. (About 31,000 or roughly 40 percent of the IRS’s current employees are classified by the agency as working in “examinations and collections.”)

But the administration wants to do all sorts of other things too, such as improving customer service, that will mean hiring across the entire agency. It hasn’t decided how many more auditors it will need, said Natasha Sarin, the agency’s counselor for tax policy and implementation.

Who gets audited

Republicans say all those people will inevitably mean more audits for average Americans. Democrats scoff, saying they are only interested in high-end tax evasion by the rich and big corporations. And they’re promising not to increase audit rates for those with incomes under $400,000.

Democrats had included provisions in their legislation to that effect, though it was deleted by the Senate’s parliamentarian as a violation of the chamber’s arcane rules about what sorts of things can go into so-called reconciliation bills. That prompted the administration to release a letter Wednesday by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen pledging “audit rates will not rise relative to recent years for households making under $400,000.”

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen delivers remarks during a press conference at the Treasury Department in Washington, D.C.