WATCH: IRS recruitment video shows how to take down small business owners
The video is part of the “Adrian Project,” an initiative designed to recruit college students into the IRS.
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The video is part of the “Adrian Project,” an initiative designed to recruit college students into the IRS.
An IRS recruitment video depicts its agents arresting and detaining the operator of a small landscaping business for potential tax evasion.
The video was posted by Republican Representative Thomas Massie from Kentucky on Thursday.
The clip highlights the moment when students from Dixie State University in St. George, Utah simulate a routine IRS tax crime investigation. They're tasked with the arrest of hypothetical small business owner "Dodger," who was trying to sell his landscaping business.
In case you thought the IRS needed 87,000 more agents to help you with your tax returns and audit billionaires, watch this: Highlights from the IRS Adrian recruiting project.
Link to original video: https://t.co/jgCluHuvvM pic.twitter.com/QXlHmDBR6D
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie)
https://rumble.com/embed/v1clob3/?pub=2n05b
Dodger was attempting to sell his small business for $1.5 million dollars, which according to the website ProfitableVenture.com, is the cost of a "medium scale landscaping business" and would yield a reasonable and common profit for the sale of the company.
In the scenario, the IRS suspects Dodger operated vehicles for his business that he may have purchased with money he didn't make from his business. Dodger didn't report the purchases of the vehicles to the IRS and the use of these vehicles for work solicited an undercover interview with IRS special agents.
The IRS agent asked, "Have you ever done any landscaping work before?"
"Just in my front yard," Dodger replied. His arrest ensued.
"Who are you guys? What is this?" Dodger exclaims as he is cuffed and on his knees.
"We're the IRS. You're going to jail, buddy," the student playacting an IRS agent exclaims.
Notice the scenario in this IRS recruiting program is “taking down a landscape business owner who failed to properly report how he paid for his vehicles,” not “taking down a billionaire who uses the corporate jet for private trips.”pic.twitter.com/QXlHmDCoWb
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie)
IRS Special Agent Ron Marker explained, "Ammunition, handcuffs, first Aid, is generally what everybody wears" to these arrests.
According to Reuters, the video is part of "the Adrian Project," which is a special IRS program designed to recruit college students into the agency, specifically the Criminal Investigation (CI) unit.
The IRS website says the Adrian Project, "provides students a glimpse into the career life of an IRS special agent and what a criminal investigation entails." IRS Supervisory Special Agent CI Casey Hill says that agents start at salaries around $60-70,000 and can top out around $175,000.
The recently passed Inflation Reduction Act, a $739 billion spending bill that will not reduce inflation, will increase the size of the IRS and create positions for nearly 87,000 new IRS agents, 70,000 of whom will be armed, by 2031.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the IRS expansion will disproportionately target and harm small business owners.
Executive Vice President at National Taxpayers Union Foundation, Joe Hinchman, said, "The IRS will have to target small and medium businesses because they won’t fight back."
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