Quick Take

After Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes funding to increase staff at the IRS, social media posts falsely claimed members of Congress “voted to exempt themselves from IRS auditing of their personal finances.” An IRS spokesperson told us “there is no such special exemption,” and we found no such vote had been taken.

Full Story

After Congress voted to provide the IRS with nearly $79 billion in funding over 10 years in the Inflation Reduction Act, the agency has been a target of misinformation from Republicans and conservative social media posts.

Critics have misleadingly claimed that the IRS will now hire “87,000 new agents” to investigate average citizens. Some baselessly claimed that recent IRS ammunition purchases may be part of a “broader effort” to get ammunition off the market. And other posts shared a video falsely claiming it showed IRS agents in training.

Posts on social media are now spreading the false claim that members of Congress voted to exempt themselves from IRS audits of their personal finances. No such bill exists, and no vote for that exemption has occurred.

“In order to safeguard democracy, Congress has voted to exempt itself and its members from upcoming IRS audits,” read a tweet posted by an account called News That Matters. The post received over 18,000 likes and 11,000 retweets.

“Congress just voted to exempt themselves from IRS auditing of their personal finances to ‘keep the country stable.’ This is what blunt...

Read Full Story: https://www.factcheck.org/2022/08/posts-fabricate-claim-that-congress-voted-t...