The answer is no. The IRS is not planning to overreach. What is happening is that certain politicians are planning to use the IRS in a way that it would do more that it was intended to do (overreach).

Under the pretext of trying to close the deficit, these politicians are planning to fund the IRS with an extra US$ 80 billion over the next 10 years in order to increase enforcement and compliance activities and to create a more complete financial account information reporting by the general public and corporations.

According to this article, Senator Crapo (R-ID) has introduced the Tax Gap Reform and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Enforcement Act. If it is approved, this law would protect people earning less than US$ 400000 from extra audits, would make the IRS use a smarter audit selection process, would increase the expertise needed for analyzing the most complex audits and would prohibit the creation of new bank reporting requirements.

This post is intended to only raise awareness. In order to make actual financial decisions please contact your financial advisor and/or tax advisor prior to making the decision.