Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth revealed Monday that his family is facing an IRS audit, blaming the outgoing Biden administration for targeting him.
Hegseth posted a photo of an IRS notice stating that the federal government is auditing his family’s income tax return, with a demand for over $33,000.
“Of course the outgoing Biden IRS rushed an ‘audit’ of the incoming SecDef. Total sham,” Hegseth wrote on X. “The party of ‘norms’ and ‘decency’ strikes again. We will never back down.”
During Biden’s tenure, the IRS received a major funding boost through the Inflation Reduction Act, a 2022 budget bill passed along partisan lines by congressional Democrats. The legislation, which allocated $80 billion to the agency, was expected to fund the hiring of 87,000 new IRS agents and generate hundreds of billions in additional tax revenue. Two years later, the IRS had recovered $1 billion through increased enforcement.
On his first day in office, Trump issued a hiring freeze for federal employees, with exceptions for national security and public safety roles. The freeze remains in place for the IRS unless the administration determines it is in the national interest to lift it.
