After right-wing media drummed up fears that last year’s IRS budget increase would lead to an “army” of militarized tax collectors, House Republican members just voted to slash the Revenue Services budget. In recent weeks, right-wing media has revived the claim that Democrats are arming the IRS to support their years-long crusade to demonize the IRS. 

Right-wing media spent much of August 2022 fearmongering about armed IRS agents

As the Biden administration neared the passing of the Inflation Reduction Act — a sprawling piece of legislation that targets greenhouse gas emissions, prescription drug costs, and the federal deficit — right-wing media launched an effort to spread misinformation about the legislation, often focusing on a proposed budget increase for the IRS. Fox News populated the discourse around the IRA with claims that the legislation would increase taxes and that the IRS budget increase would be used against Republicans. The most enduring of those claims was the categorically false theory that the Biden administration planned to hire 87,000 armed IRS agents to go after conservatives, small businesses, and average Americans. 

Relying on an intentional misreading of the IRA, along with heavily circulated screenshots of IRS job listings detailing that candidates would need to carry a firearm, Fox News propagated the narrative that the government is going to war with its own people, a narrative that spread throughout right-wing media. Here are some of the highlights from August’s frenzy over a nonexistent IRS army: 

• Fox host Laura Ingraham, host of Fox’s The Ingraham Angle, claimed Biden was using the IRS as his “new Gestapo.” Earlier, her show ran a chyron reading “From the IRS to the FBI: They are coming for you.”
• Fox host Will Cain erroneously branded the IRS as “mysteriously, heavily militarized” before baselessly stating that the agency had “stockpiled thousands of firearms and millions of rounds of ammunition.”
• Speaking on his podcast, TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk encouraged state governments to refuse to cooperate with the IRS.
• Fox contributor Raymond Arroyo warned that the IRS “Praetorian Guard” would “literally” aim weapons at average Americans. 
• One America News Network’s Dan Ball declared that there was a “war going on right now” between the IRS and Americans. 
• Fox’s Tammy Bruce pushed the idea that President Joe Biden was “weaponizing the IRS” in order to target “wealthy Americans.”

As House GOP members revive the myth of an “IRS army,” right-wing media were quick to follow

Five months and one flipped chamber later, House Republicans are ready to act on right-wing media’s fabrications about a bloated IRS budget. A nearly $80 billion budget cut to the IRS passed the House on Tuesday after newly minted Speaker Kevin McCarthy pledged to eliminate funding for the 87,000 new agents upon taking the gavel. McCarthy’s pledge echoed his previous bemoaning of the “Democrats’ new army” as the budget cut hit the House floor, with a number of other GOP members of Congress parroting similar claims from right-wing media about a Democratic administration targeting average Americans. As House GOP members opened the 118th Congress with the IRS budget cuts, right-wing media have been quick to dredge up the specter of tax collecting boogeymen. Here are a few of the initial reactions to the proposed budget cuts:

• On January 10, OAN host Stephanie Myers reported that funding for the IRS and the Inflation Reduction Act “was intended to increase the size of the agency by 87,000 agents, which Republicans say will target middle to lower income Americans.” Myers also pointed out that “former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi lamented the act, which she claims would protect corporations and tax evaders.”
• After guest Rep. Mark Green (R-TN) called the proposed legislation an “easy bill” and a “chip shot” against the 87,000 IRS agents on the January 10 edition of Fox Business’ Varney and Company, host Stuart Varney pointed out that “unfortunately, when it gets to the Senate, they'll kill it and resurrect the IRS, won't they?”
• On the January 10 edition of Fox News’ America’s Newsroom, panelist Charles Payne said the IRS is targeting small businesses, stating that with the proposed budget cut, “maybe a whole lot of middle income, lower income, small business owners might be able to breathe a sigh of relief.” Payne later questioned the “astronomical overreach” of a need for 87,000 additional IRS agents, calling the Act “so crazy and so nuts.”
• Also on that edition of America’s Newsroom, guest Josh Holmes acknowledged that “the speaker fight was a little bit of a mess … but ultimately it was successful and legislating is a pretty ugly business." He then pointed to the move to “repeal the 87,000 new IRS agents the Democrats bestowed upon the American people last year. That's the kind of thing that unites Republicans with the center of the electorate and moves the ball forward.” 
• On Fox and Friends on January 8, Fox host Maria Bartiromo baselessly drew comparisons to funding border patrol agents, questioning why Biden has “$80 billion earmarked for another 87,000 IRS agents” compared to “15,000 border agents at the border overall.”
• A January 10 article on the proposed bill from the Daily Wire framed the IRS as the “Democrats’ army.”

Demonizing the IRS is nothing new for right-wing outlets, least of all Fox News. For decades Fox has targeted the agency with scandalized nonstories filled with misleading information and often outright lies. Much like the myth of the “IRS Army,” right-wing media figures have consistently drummed up fear by framing tax collection as a dastardly government plot to target and destroy conservatives and small businesses.