Yes, IRS did purchase nearly $700,000 in ammo in early 2022

On July 1, Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-FL) introduced the Disarm the IRS Act, which would ban the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) from acquiring ammunition.

Gaetz previously claimed the IRS was buying hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of ammunition. In an interview published in June by Breitbart, a conservative news website, Gaetz reported that the IRS spent about $700,000 on ammunition purchases “between March and June 1.”

The Disarm the IRS Act was co-sponsored by South Carolina’s Jeff Duncan (SC-03), who also tweeted that the IRS “stocked” ammunition.

VERIFY viewer Ian sent us a link to another article and asked us to confirm if the IRS is buying guns and ammo.

Did the IRS buy about $700,000 in ammunition between March and June 1st?

Yes, between March 1 and June 1, 2022, the IRS ordered $696,000 worth of ammunition, a spokesman confirmed to VERIFY.

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Between March 1 and June 1, 2022, the IRS criminal division ordered $696,000 worth of ammunition, the IRS told VERIFY in an email.

The job was for the IRS Criminal Investigation Division (IRS-CI), a federal law enforcement agency that conducts criminal investigations including tax violations, money laundering, cybercrime and organized crime involving drugs and gangs. There are more than 2,000 sworn special agents in the division.

“Many of these cases are typically handled in cooperation with other state and federal law enforcement agencies. IRS-CI special agents have carried firearms and dealt with some of the most dangerous criminals throughout the agency’s more than 100-year history,” an IRS spokesman told VERIFY.

In 2018, the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report on the IRS’s expenditure on firearms and ammunition from 2010 to 2017. The data begins on page 75 of the report.

From 2010 to 2017, the IRS spent an average of $675,000 a year on ammunition, the report shows. During that time, the IRS spent the most in 2011 at $1,100,000.

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In comparison, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, which is responsible for investigating wrongdoing or fraud within the IRS, spent an average of $250,625 per year on ammunition from 2010 through 2017.

The US Marshals Service spent an average of nearly $3.2 million annually on ammunition during the same period.

GAO informed VERIFY that no more recent data on the annual expenditures of the IRS is available.

So we can confirm that between March 1st and June 1st the IRS purchased nearly $700,000 in ammunition, but it is to arm their criminal division and is not a new trend.