Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Monday unveiled legislation that would nearly triple the Internal Revenue Service’s budget to $31.5 billion to ensure wealthy tax evaders don’t engage in tax dodging and, instead, end up paying the proper amounts owed through expanded staffing and stricter enforcement.

“For too long, the wealthiest Americans and big corporations have been able to use lawyers, accountants, and lobbyists to avoid paying their fair share—and budget cuts have hollowed out the IRS so it doesn't have the resources to go after wealthy tax cheats,” Warren, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement. “The IRS should have more—and more stable—resources to do its job, and my bill would do just that.”

The IRS has experienced a 20 percent decline in its staff since 2010, with fewer auditors compared to more than a century ago. With the proper staff and resources, the agency could pivot its tax focuses on wealthy individuals and corporations, Democrats argue.

Warren’s bill would remove the IRS’s base budget from the annual appropriations process and would provide it with mandatory funding. In fiscal 2022, the budget would be priced at $31.5 billion, a figure that nearly triples the IRS’s budget for fiscal year 2021 of $11.9 billion, after adjusting for inflation.

The senator’s bill would enhance the required reporting that financial institutions have to provide to the IRS about account activity to help the agency verify tax filings.

Warren’s proposed legislation would also force the IRS to shift audits toward high-income individuals and corporations, to provide estimates of the “tax gap” and to analyze any racial disparities in tax enforcement. 

The bill would also boost underpayment penalties for taxpayers with incomes above $2 million.

President Joe Biden has called for $80 billion to strengthen resources and operations at the IRS, a push that the Treasury Department says would raise roughly $700 billion over the next decade and $1.6 trillion in the decade after enactment. The department noted that the added funding would allow the IRS to hire nearly 87,000 employees and raise $320 billion in revenue through 2031.

But similar to Warren’s legislation, Biden has also proposed increasing third-party reporting from financial institutions.

The department also indicated that the tax gap between paid and owed taxes was $584 billion in 2019 and is on track to hit $7 trillion over the next decade. Officials also uncovered that the gap was $441 billion a year between 2011 and 2013, a figure that IRS commissioner Charles Rettig said could be significantly higher.

Both sides of the aisle have expressed a willingness to reach an agreement on IRS enforcement, as Democrats and Republicans want to narrow the current tax gap. 

Some GOP lawmakers, however, have balked at the increased funding for the agency, sounding the alarm over the Democratic efforts interfering with the rights of taxpayers.

Rachel Bucchino is a reporter at the National Interest. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, U.S. News & World Report and The Hill.