House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wisconsin) are launching an investigation into whether the IRS is improperly using artificial intelligence technology to surveil American taxpayers across the country.
The IRS stated in a press release from September 2023 that “AI will help IRS compliance teams better detect tax cheating, identify emerging compliance threats, and improve case selection tools to avoid burdening taxpayers with needless ‘no-change ‘audits,” as mentioned in a pair of letters sent to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Attorney General Merrick Garland.
According to recent reports, the IRS has also been actively monitoring American citizens ‘bank accounts en masse and without the use of legal process,’ the lawmakers explained, pointing to a recent report from O'Keefe Media Group.
An IRS official working in the agency's Criminal Investigations Unit, Alex Mena, appears to have been captured on video by an investigative media outlet, which shows him confirming that the IRS has “a new system” that uses AI to target “potential abusers” by looking through all returns, bank statements, and related financial information for “potential for fraud.” The new AI system has the ability to “access and monitor all the information from all the companies in the world,” according to Mena.
The man who allegedly worked for the IRS, Alex Mena, claims that the IRS had no problem “going after the small people… like destroying people's lives” in the video.
