Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

22. Department of the Treasury · Notable · Needs Congress

Hold the IRS operating budget constant in real terms

Partially done

701 22. Department of the Treasury

“The operating budget of the IRS should be held constant in real terms.”

What has happened

  1. Partially done

    The IRS's annual operating appropriation was cut rather than held constant. Public Law 119-75 division E funds the IRS at $3,036,606,000 for taxpayer services, $4,999,000,000 for enforcement and $3,159,759,000 for technology and operations support — $11,195,365,000 in all, against $12,319,054,000 in the last enacted Financial Services appropriation (Public Law 118-47 division B, carried forward through fiscal 2025 by the full-year continuing resolution). That is a nominal cut of about 9 percent and a larger real one. What was not done is the thing the Quote actually asks for: no statutory or budgetary rule holds the operating budget constant in real terms, and the level is set afresh each year.

  2. Not started

    The fiscal 2025 figure the comparison below turns on, stated by Treasury itself rather than inferred. The IRS chapter of the Department's FY2026 Congressional Justification prints an appropriations table whose columns are FY2024 Operating Plan, FY2025 Operating Plan and FY2026 Request, and the FY2025 column totals **$12,319,054 thousand** — the same figure as FY2024, to the dollar. The narrative says it in words: the FY2026 request "of $9.8 billion in annual appropriations" is "$2.5 billion less than, or a 20.19 percent decrease from, the FY 2025 enacted level of $12.3 billion". Two details the total hides. The *allocation* moved even though the sum did not — Taxpayer Services down $476.9 million to $2,780,606 thousand, Enforcement up $271.9 million to $5,437,622 thousand, Technology and Operations Support up $205.0 million to $4,100,826 thousand, and staffing down 2,008 full-time equivalents. And the FY2025 column carries a footnote that it "represents the Operating Plan level before the Inter-Appropriations Transfer (IAT) of up to $272 million from Enforcement to Taxpayer Services". The Status at this date is `not-started`: holding a budget flat for one year because a continuing resolution carried it forward is not the Administration adopting the rule the Quote asks for.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

Read-queue ticket 07, 2026-09-06 — the assumption was correct and is now sourced. The row noted that the FY2025 number had never been read from an allowlisted source, because the full-year continuing resolution sets levels by reference. That is right about the CR: Public Law 119-4 was read in full at govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-119publ4/html/PLAW-119publ4.htm and the string “Internal Revenue” appears in it zero times. Its section 1101(a) appropriates “such amounts as may be necessary, at the level specified in subsection (c) and under the authority and conditions provided in applicable appropriations Acts for fiscal year 2024” for the Acts it lists, of which item (5) is the FY2024 Financial Services and General Government Act; section 1101(c) defines “level” as “the amounts appropriated in the appropriations Acts referred to in such subsection”; and Title VI, the FSGG-specific overrides at sections 1601 to 1608, names the Election Assistance Commission, the Federal Buildings Fund, NARA repairs, the District of Columbia federal payment, SBA disaster loans and pay provisions — no IRS account. So the carry-forward is by operation of the Act, and Treasury’s own FY2026 justification prints the resulting number. One consequence worth recording: the CR did touch IRS money without naming the IRS, by carrying forward division B’s $20.2 billion rescission of Inflation Reduction Act enforcement funds, which the same justification records (that is #1944’s subject, not this one). There is no FY2027 Congressional Justification on home.treasury.gov — the FY2027 landing pages 404 and the sitemap’s fy-202[5-7] grep returns FY2025 and FY2026 only — so the FY2026 document is the newest column available and no FY2025 actuals are published anywhere.

Prior-year comparison read from the enrolled text of Public Law 118-47 at https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-118publ47/html/PLAW-118publ47.htm: taxpayer services $2,780,606,000, enforcement $5,437,622,000, technology and operations support $4,100,826,000. That law is outside the evidence window and is cited here as context, not as Evidence.

The Inflation Reduction Act’s supplemental IRS appropriation is a separate ask and is tracked at #1944 (partial, $11.661bn rescinded by this same law).

Leveling call, flagged for the consistency pass: partial rather than not started because the growth the Mandate objects to was reversed, and rather than done because a cut is not constancy and no rule was adopted.

Action
restrict
Object
IRS operating budget
ID
1961