Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel traveled to Austin, Texas, to tour an IRS campus and announce the latest milestone in tax collections as Republicans warn of big future budget cuts for the tax agency if they take over the White House and Congress.

Yellen said in a speech in Austin that in 2019, the top one percent of wealthy Americans owed more than one-fifth of all unpaid taxes, “leaving ordinary Americans to shoulder the burden.”

“To fix this, we’ve channeled IRS funding toward significant investments to combat tax evasion,” she said.

In 2023 and 2024 the IRS launched a series of initiatives aimed at pursuing high-wealth individuals who have failed to pay their tax debts. The IRS said the campaign is focused on taxpayers with more than $1 million in income and more than $250,000 in recognized tax debt.

Agency officials said since the program’s launch, almost 80% of the 1,600 millionaires targeted by the IRS for failing to pay a delinquent tax debt have now made a payment, leading to over $1.1 billion recovered. And in the first six months of a new February 2024 initiative, the IRS collected $172 million from 21,000 wealthy taxpayers who have not filed tax returns since 2017.

Republicans have called for funding for the IRS to be cut.

Donald Trump’s campaign for president said he would drastically reduce spending on federal agencies — and that Democratic nominee Kamala Harris “cast the tiebreaking vote to hire 87,000 new IRS agents to go after your tip income.”

That debunked claim comes from a plan the Treasury Department proposed in 2021 to bring on that many IRS employees over the next decade if it got the money. At least 50,000 IRS employees are expected to retire over the next five years.

The National Taxpayer Advocate, the independent IRS watchdog, issued a 2023 annual report stating that the IRS employs roughly 681 armed agents.

In its efforts to modernize, the agency this year also launched a program called Direct File, which allows people with very simple W-2s to calculate and submit their returns directly to the IRS. The IRS said in April that those using the program claimed more than $90 million in refunds.

While the program included 12 participating states in the 2024 tax filing season, more states have joined in for the 2025 tax season, including Maryland, Oregon, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Connecticut, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Maine.

A broad new government initiative, dubbed “Time Is Money,” includes a rollout of new regulations and the promise of more for industries spanning from healthcare and fitness memberships to media subscriptions.

“The administration is cracking down on all the ways that companies, through paperwork, hold times and general aggravation waste people’s money and waste people’s time and really hold onto their money,” Neera Tanden, White House domestic policy adviser, told reporters Friday in advance of the announcement.

“Essentially in all of these practices, companies are delaying services to you or really trying to make it so difficult for you to cancel the service that they get to hold onto your money for longer and longer,” Tanden said. “These seemingly small inconveniences don’t happen by accident — they have huge financial consequences.”

Efforts being rolled out Monday include a new Federal Communications Commission inquiry into whether to impose requirements on communications companies that would make it as easy to cancel a subscription or service as it was to sign up for one.

The Federal Trade Commission in March 2023 initiated “click to cancel” rulemaking requiring companies to let customers end subscriptions as easily as they started them.

Also Monday, the heads of the departments of Labor and of Health and Human Services are asking health insurance companies and group health plans to make improvements to customer interactions with their health coverage, and “in the coming months will identify additional opportunities to improve consumers’ interactions with the health care system,” according to a White House summary.

The government already has launched several initiatives aimed at improving the consumer experience.

In October, the FTC announced a proposed rule to ban hidden and bogus junk fees, which can mask the total cost of concert tickets, hotel rooms and utility bills.

In April, the Transportation Department finalized rules that would require airlines to automatically issue cash refunds for things like delayed flights and to better disclose fees for baggage or reservation cancellations.

The department also has taken actions against individual companies accused of misleading customers.

In June, the Justice Department, referred by the FTC, filed a lawsuit against software maker Adobe and two of its executives, Maninder Sawhney and David Wadhwani, for allegedly pushing consumers toward the firm’s “annual paid monthly” subscription without properly disclosing that canceling the plan in the first year could cost hundreds of dollars.

Dana Rao, Adobe’s general counsel, said in an emailed statement that Adobe disagrees with the lawsuit’s characterization of its business and “we will refute the FTC’s claims in court.”

“The early termination fees equate to minimal impact to our revenue, accounting for less than half a percent of our total revenue globally, but is an important part of our ability to offer customers a choice in plans that balance cost and commitment,” Rao said.

Some business advocates are not a fan of the government’s overall efforts to crack down on junk fees.

Sean Heather, senior vice president of international regulatory affairs and antitrust at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said the initiative is “nothing more than an attempt to micromanage businesses’ pricing structures, often undermining businesses’ ability to give consumers options at different price points.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — The IRS plans to end a major tax loophole for wealthy taxpayers that could raise more than $50 billion in revenue over the next decade, the U.S. Treasury Department says.

The proposed rule and guidance announced Monday includes plans to essentially stop “partnership basis shifting” — a process by which a business or person can move assets among a series of related parties to avoid paying taxes.

Biden administration officials said after evaluating the practice that there are no economic grounds for these transactions, with Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo calling it “really just a shell game.” The officials said the additional IRS funding provided through the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act had enabled increased oversight and greater awareness of the practice.

“These tax shelters allow wealthy taxpayers to avoid paying what they owe,” IRS commissioner Danny Werfel said.

Due to previous years of underfunding, the IRS had cut back on the auditing of wealthy individuals and the shifting of assets among partnerships and companies became common.

The IRS says filings for large pass-through businesses used for the type of tax avoidance in the guidance increased 70% from 174,100 in 2010 to 297,400 in 2019. However, audit rates for these businesses fell from 3.8% to 0.1% in the same time frame.

Treasury said in a statement announcing the new guidance that there is an estimated $160 billion gap between what the top 1% of earners likely owe in taxes and what they pay.

Miles Johnson, a senior attorney adviser and partnership tax specialist at the Tax Law Center at NYU Law, said “these transactions effectively make income disappear from the tax system by creating depreciation deductions or other tax reductions that don’t reflect any true economic cost.”

He said the proposed rule and guidance shows that the IRS wants to stop these sorts of transactions “by eliminating their tax benefits and better identifying them to the IRS as without substance.”

Monday’s announcement is part of the IRS’s ongoing effort to zero in on high-wealth tax cheats who manipulate the tax code or don’t pay their taxes at all.

Initiatives announced in the past year have included pursuing people and businesses that improperly deduct personal flights on corporate jets and collecting back taxes from delinquent millionaires.

The IRS plans to raise audit rates on companies with assets above $250 million to 22.6% in 2026, from an 8.8% rate in the tax year 2019. It also plans to increase audit rates by tenfold on large complex partnerships with assets over $10 million.

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See all of the AP’s tax season coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/personal-finance.

The Trump campaign launched a fundraising page that allows “any federally permissible donor the ability to give” to its political committees using any crypto asset accepted through the Coinbase cryptocurrency exchange.

The announcement promotes Trump’s message that he is a crypto-friendly candidate, and also appeals to a core group of young male voters who are increasingly likely to dabble in digital assets. It came as Trump’s defense rested in his hush money case in New York.

Cryptocurrencies are a digital asset that can be traded over the internet without relying on the global banking system.

Trump’s campaign is accepting a range of popular cryptocurrencies that include Bitcoin, Ether and US Dollar Coin, and also include the low-value coins that tend to be popular with Internet personalities like Shiba Inu Coin, and Dogecoin.

Billionaire Elon Musk, most notably, is considered a fan of the latter two, traded on markets as DOGE and SHIB.

It’s not clear whether the Trump campaign will hold onto the crypto or will immediately sell it, and what sort of fees it may pay to liquidate. While the campaign says it plans to follow U.S. election laws, the anonymous nature of cryptocurrencies can make it tricky to confirm the funds are coming from who they say they are.

Trump has already received millions in cryptocurrency personally through his Trump Digital Trading Cards non-fungible token projects and his MAGA coin, which was released last August.

Julia Krieger, a spokeswoman for Coinbase, told The Associated Press that “crypto is nonpartisan and moves money forward because it’s cheaper and faster,” adding that the Coinbase platform is open to all candidates this election season.

A representative from President Joe Biden’s campaign did not respond to an Associated Press request for comment on whether it will begin accepting cryptocurrency donations.

While some states don’t allow cryptocurrency donations in state races under existing campaign finance laws, the Federal Election Commission does allow committees to receive bitcoin as contributions.

A 2014 advisory opinion issued by the commission concluded that bitcoin is “money or anything of value” within the meaning of the law and political committees should value the contribution based on the market value of bitcoin at the time the contribution is received.

The presidential campaign for independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. currently accepts bitcoin donations.

In conventional money, Biden and the Democratic National Committee said Monday that they raised more than $51 million in April, falling well short of the $76 million that Trump and the Republican Party reported taking in for the month.

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Associated Press reporter Ken Sweet in New York contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. and U.K. on Thursday imposed a new round of sanctions on Iran as concern grows that Tehran’s unprecedented attack on Israel could fuel a wider war in the Middle East.

The sanctions were meant to hold Iran accountable for its weekend attack and to deter further such activity. But the practical impact is likely to be limited because many of the targeted companies already were subject to U.S. sanctions and the individuals singled out for new sanctions are unlikely to have assets in U.S. jurisdictions.

Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control targeted 16 people and two entities in Iran that produce engines that power the drones used in the April 13 attack on Israel. OFAC also sanctioned five firms involved in steel production and three subsidiaries of Iranian automaker Bahman Group — which is accused of materially supporting Iran’s military and other sanctioned groups. A representative from Bahman was not immediately available for comment.

Additionally, the U.K. is targeting several Iranian military branches and individuals involved in Iran’s drone and ballistic missile industries.

President Joe Biden said in a statement that he had directed U.S. Treasury “to continue to impose sanctions that further degrade Iran’s military industries.” “Let it be clear to all those who enable or support Iran’s attacks,” he said, “we will not hesitate to take all necessary action to hold you accountable.”

U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said in a statement that the sanctions “will further limit Iran’s ability to destabilize the region.”

In addition to Treasury’s sanctions, the U.S. Commerce Department is imposing new controls to restrict Iran’s access to basic commercial grade microelectronics, which apply to items manufactured outside the U.S. that are produced using U.S. technology.

The actions come after U.S. officials earlier this week warned that they were readying new sanctions in response to Iran’s activity in the region and to prevent future attacks. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill also have been quickly pushing forward legislation that would financially punish the Islamic Republic and its leaders.

Iran’s attack on Israel early Sunday came in response to what it says was an Israeli strike on Iran’s consulate in Syria earlier this month. Israel’s military chief said Monday that his country will respond to the Iranian attack, while world leaders caution against retaliation, trying to avoid a spiral of violence.

European Union leaders also vowed on Wednesday to ramp up sanctions on Iran, targeting its drone and missile deliveries to proxies in Gaza, Yemen and Lebanon.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the existing EU sanctions regime would be strengthened and expanded to punish Tehran and help prevent future attacks on Israel. At the same time, he said, Israel needed to exercise restraint.

“I don’t want to exaggerate, but we are on the edge of a war, a regional war in the Middle East, which will be sending shockwaves to the rest of the world, and in particular to Europe,” he warned. “So stop it.”

The U.S. has already sanctioned hundreds of entities and people in Iran — from the central bank and government officials to drone producers and money exchangers — accused of materially supporting Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and foreign militant groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis.

And U.S. efforts to limit Iran’s income from oil and petroleum products span back decades.

The question remains how effective sanctions will be, and have been, in preventing Iran from ramping up its production of military equipment. American defense officials accuse Iran of supplying drones to Russia as it pursues its invasion of Ukraine, which has reached a third year.

Earlier this week, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said during a press conference that the U.S. has “been working to diminish Iran’s ability to export oil.”

”There may be more that we could do,” she said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — On this Tax Day, refunds are looking a bit bigger for taxpayers.

According to the latest IRS statistics, the average income tax refund so far this season is $3,011, up $123 from last year. Two out of three taxpayers expect to receive a refund.

The IRS is promoting the customer service improvements the agency rolled out since receiving tens of billions in new funding dollars through Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act. Getting refunds out faster — to some people in just over a week — is part of the promotion.

So far, the IRS has delivered more than $200 billion in refunds through early April, and the latest agency numbers show that 101 million people have filed returns this tax season.

At least one prominent person did not get a refund. President Joe Biden on Monday released the tax returns he filed with his wife, Jill, showing that he still owed the IRS $334 and the state of Delaware $1,480. But Jill Biden qualified for a $433 refund from Virginia, where she teaches. The Biden earned $619,976 and paid a federal income tax rate of 23.7%.

From cutting phone wait times to digitizing more documents and improving the “Where’s My Refund” tool to show more account details in plain language, agency leaders are trying to bring attention to what’s been done to repair the image of the IRS as an outdated and maligned tax collector.

The promotion also in part is meant to quickly normalize a more efficient and effective IRS before congressional Republicans threaten another round of spending cuts to the agency. So time is of the essence for both taxpayers and the agency.

“This filing season, the IRS has built off past successes and reached new milestones,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on a Friday call with reporters. “It’s showing that when it has the resources it needs, it will provide taxpayers the service they deserve.”

“It’s clear that we’re seeing historic improvements in taxpayer service levels, and the agency is rebounding from some very tough and lean years during the past decade,” said IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel.

For most people, April 15 is the last day to submit tax returns or to file an extension.

The IRS says call wait times have been cut down to three minutes this tax season, compared with the average 28 minutes in 2022. That has saved taxpayers 1.4 million hours of hold time and the agency has answered 3 million more calls compared with the same time frame. Also, the updated “Where’s My Refund” tool giving more specific information about taxpayers’ refunds in plain language was rolled out to 31 million views online.

Werfel told The Associated Press earlier this year that the agency’s agenda is to deliver “better service for all Americans so that we can ease stress, frustration and make the tax filing process easier — and to increase scrutiny on complex filers where there’s risk of tax evasion.”

“When we do that,” Werfel said, “not only do we make the tax system work better because it’s easier and more streamlined to meet your tax obligations. But also we collect more money for the U.S. Treasury and lower our deficit. The IRS is a good investment.”

Major new initiatives in recent months have included an aggressive pursuit of high-wealth earners who don’t pay their full tax obligations, such as people who improperly deduct personal flights on corporate jets and those who just don’t file at all.

This also is the first tax season that the IRS has rolled out a program called Direct File, the government’s free electronic tax return filing system available to taxpayers in 12 states who have simple W-2 forms and claim a standard deduction.

If Direct File is successful and scaled up for the general public’s use, the program could drastically change how Americans file their taxes and how much money they spend completing them. That is, if the agency can see the program through its development in spite of threats to its funding.

The Inflation Reduction Act initially included $80 billion for the IRS.

However, House Republicans have successfully clawed back some of the money. They built a $1.4 billion reduction to the IRS into the debt ceiling and budget cuts package passed by Congress last summer. A separate agreement will take an additional $20 billion from the IRS over the next two years to divert to other nondefense programs.

Government watchdogs warn IRS funding cuts will reduce the amount of revenues the U.S. collects.

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office reported in February that a $5 billion rescission from the IRS would reduce revenues by $5.2 billion over the next 10 years and increase the cumulative deficit by $0.2 billion. A $20 billion rescission would reduce revenues by $44 billion and a $35 billion rescission would reduce revenues by $89 billion and increase the deficit by $54 billion.

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See all of the AP’s tax season coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/personal-finance

Unlikely to pass the House and Senate to become law, the proposal for fiscal 2025 is an election year blueprint about what the future could hold if Biden and enough of his fellow Democrats win in November. The president and his aides previewed parts of his budget going into last week’s State of the Union address, and they provided the fine print on Monday.

If the Biden budget became law, deficits could be pruned $3 trillion over a decade. It would raise tax revenues by a total of $4.9 trillion over that period and use roughly $1.9 trillion to fund various programs, with the rest going to deficit reduction.

The president traveled Monday to Manchester, New Hampshire, where he called on Congress to apply his $2,000 cap on drug costs and $35 insulin to everyone, not just people who have Medicare. He also advocated for making permanent some protections in the Affordable Care Act that are set to expire next year.

“I’m here in New Hampshire to talk about the budget I released today that would, I think, help in a big way,” Biden said.

Biden aides said their budget was realistic and detailed while rival measures from Republicans were not financially viable.

“Congressional Republicans don’t tell you what they cut, who they harm,” White House budget director Shalanda Young said. “The president is transparent, details every way he shows he values the America people.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, issued a joint statement with other GOP leaders calling the Biden proposal a “glaring reminder of this Administration’s insatiable appetite for reckless spending.”

“Biden’s budget doesn’t just miss the mark — it is a roadmap to accelerate America’s decline,” the House Republican leaders said.

Under the proposal, the government would spend $7.3 trillion next fiscal year and borrow $1.8 trillion to cover the shortfall from tax receipts. Biden’s 188-page plan covers a decade’s worth of spending, taxes and debt.

Parents could get an increased child tax credit in 2025, as payments would return briefly to the 2021 level funded by Biden’s coronavirus pandemic relief package. Homebuyers could get a tax credit worth up to $10,000 and $10 billion in down payment aid for first-generation buyers. Corporate taxes would jump upward, while billionaires would be charged a minimum tax of 25%.

Biden said in his State of the Union that Medicare should have the ability to negotiate prices on 500 prescription drugs, which could save $200 billion over 10 years. Aides said his budget does not specify how many drug prices would be subject to negotiations.

Biden’s plan would permanently keep Medicare solvent, according to aides, but as noted by Maya MacGuineas, president of the fiscal group Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, it does not appear to fix Social Security, which projections say will be unable to pay full benefits starting in 2033.

The proposal would provide about $900 billion for defense in fiscal 2025, about $16 billion more than the baseline.

The Biden administration is still seeking money to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia and aid for Israel. His budget plan reiterates the supplemental funding request made last October for Ukraine, Israel and humanitarian relief for Palestinians

It’s also requesting funding to expand personnel and resources at the U.S. southern border. Still, military spending over 10 years would decline $146 billion to $9.57 trillion.

One key theme in the budget plan is an effort to help families afford their basic needs, as the impact of inflation hitting a four-decade high in 2022 continues to leave many voters feeling as though they’re worse off under Biden.

The budget proposal includes $258 billion to help build or preserve 2 million homes, helping to address a national shortage that has kept housing prices high. Parents making under $200,000 annually would have access to child care, with most eligible families paying no more than $10 a day.

It would eliminate origination fees on government student loans, possibly saving borrowers $1,000 over the life of the debt. It also includes $12 billion to help universities develop strategies for reducing their costs.

All of this is a chance for Biden to try to define the race on his preferred terms, just as the all-but-certain Republican nominee, Donald Trump, wants to rally voters around his agenda.

Trump, for his part, would like to increase tariffs and pump out gushers of oil. He called for a “second phase” of tax cuts as parts of his 2017 overhaul of the income tax code would expire after 2025. The Republican has also said he would slash government regulations. He has also pledged to pay down the national debt, though it’s unclear how without him detailing severe spending cuts.

In a Monday interview with CNBC, Trump indicated that he would be willing to reduce spending for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, though he did not offer a full policy.

“There is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting,” Trump said.

The interview drew Biden’s attention, prompting him to tell the audience in New Hampshire that cuts were off the table: “The bottom line is he’s still at it. I’m never going to allow that to happen.”

House Republicans on Thursday voted their own budget resolution for the next fiscal year out of committee, saying it would trim deficits by $14 trillion over 10 years. But their measure would depend on rosy economic forecasts and sharp spending cuts, reducing $8.7 trillion in Medicare and Medicaid expenditures. Biden has pledged to stop any cuts to Medicare.

Meanwhile, Congress is still working on a budget for the current fiscal year. On Saturday, Biden signed into law a $460 billion package to avoid a shutdown of several federal agencies, but lawmakers are only about halfway through addressing spending for this fiscal year.

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Boak reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Colleen Long in Washington also contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States and European Union on Friday heaped hundreds of new sanctions on Russia in connection with the second anniversary of its invasion of Ukraine and in retaliation for the death of noted Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny last week in an Arctic penal colony.

The U.S. government imposed roughly 600 new sanctions on Russia and its war machine in the largest single round of penalties since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.

The EU, for its part, added sanctions on several foreign companies over allegations that they have exported dual-use goods to Russia that could be used in its war against Ukraine. The 27-nation bloc also targeted scores of Russian officials, including members of the judiciary, local politicians and people it said were “responsible for the illegal deportation and military re-education of Ukrainian children.”

President Joe Biden said the sanctions come in response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “brutal war of conquest” and to Navalny’s death, adding that “we in the United States are going to continue to ensure that Putin pays a price for his aggression abroad and repression at home.”

But while previous sanctions have increased costs for Russia’s ability to fight in Ukraine, they appear to have done little so far to deter Putin and it was unclear that the latest big round would significantly alter that.

In specific response to Navalny’s death, the State Department targeted three Russian officials the U.S. says are connected to his death, including the deputy director of Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service, who was promoted by Putin to the rank of colonel general on Monday, three days after Navalny died.

The sanctions bar the officials from traveling to the U.S. and block access to U.S.-owned property. But they appear largely symbolic given that the officials are unlikely to travel to or have assets or family in the West.

White House national security spokesman John Kirby said to “expect more” action later related to Navalny’s death, adding that “today this just a start.”

The Biden administration is levying additional sanctions as House Republicans are blocking billions of dollars in additional aid to Ukraine. The war is becoming entangled in U.S. election-year politics, with former President Donald Trump voicing skepticism about the benefits of the NATO alliance and saying that he would “encourage” Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to countries that, in his view, are not pulling their weight in the alliance.

Biden on Friday called on Congress to pass Ukraine aid, which has stalled since House Speaker Mike Johnson blocked votes on aid passed by the Senate for Ukraine and other countries.

“Russia is taking Ukraine territory for the first time in many months,” Biden said. “But here in America, the speaker gave the house a two week vacation. They have to come back and get this done, because failure to support Ukraine in this critical moment will never be forgotten in history.”

Biden spoke later Friday with French President Emmanuel Macron about Russia’s recent actions and the need to support Ukraine. A White House readout said they also discussed developments in the Middle East.

Many of the new U.S. sanctions announced Friday target Russian firms that contribute to the Kremlin’s war effort — like drone and industrial chemical manufacturers and machine tool importers — as well as financial institutions, such as the state-owned operator of Russia’s Mir National Payment System.

The U.S. also will impose visa restrictions on Russian authorities it says are involved in the kidnapping and confinement of Ukrainian children. In addition, 26 third-country people and firms from across China, Serbia, the United Arab Emirates, and Liechtenstein are listed for sanctions, for assisting Russia in evading existing financial penalties.

The Russian foreign ministry called the EU sanctions “illegal” and said they undermine “the international legal prerogatives of the UN Security Council.” In response, the ministry is banning some EU citizens from entering the country because they have provided military assistance to Ukraine. It did not immediately address the U.S. sanctions.

Overall, since the start of the war, the U.S. Treasury and State departments have targeted more than 4,000 officials, oligarchs, firms, banks and others under Russia-related sanctions authorities. The EU asset freezes and travel bans constitute its 13th package of measures imposed by the bloc against people and organizations it suspects of undermining the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.

“Today, we are further tightening the restrictive measures against Russia’s military and defense sector,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said. “We remain united in our determination to dent Russia’s war machine and help Ukraine win its legitimate fight for self-defense.”

In all, 106 more officials and 88 “entities” — often companies, banks, government agencies or other organizations — have been added to the bloc’s sanctions list, bringing the tally of those targeted to more than 2,000 people and entities, including Putin and his associates.

Companies making electronic components, which the EU believes could have military as well as civilian uses, were among 27 entities accused of “directly supporting Russia’s military and industrial complex in its war of aggression against Ukraine,” a statement said.

Those companies — some of them based in India, Sri Lanka, China, Serbia, Kazakhstan, Thailand and Turkey — face tougher export restrictions.

Some of the measures are aimed at depriving Russia of parts for pilotless drones, which are seen by military experts as key to the war.

A $60 per barrel price cap has also been imposed on Russian oil by Group of Seven allies, intended to reduce Russia’s revenues from fossil fuels.

Critics of the sanctions, price cap and other measures meant to stop Russia’s invasion say they are not working fast enough.

Maria Snegovaya, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that primarily sanctioning Russia’s defense industry and failing to cut meaningfully into Russia’s energy revenues will not be enough to halt the war.

“One way or another, they will have to eventually address Russia’s oil revenues and have to consider an oil embargo,” Snegovaya said. “The oil price cap has effectively stopped working.”

Treasury Deputy Secretary Wally Adeyemo, in previewing the new sanctions, told reporters that the U.S. and its allies will not lower the price cap; “rather what we’ll be doing is taking actions that will increase the cost” of Russia’s production of oil.

The Treasury Department says the current cap is working, with an agency analysis finding that Kremlin oil tax revenue was more than 40 percent lower in the first nine months of 2023 because of it.

Adeyemo added that “sanctions alone are not enough to carry Ukraine to victory.”

“We owe the Ukrainian people who have held on for so long the support and resources they desperately need to defend their homeland and prove Putin wrong once and for all time.”

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Associated Press writers Josh Boak and Zeke Miller in Washington and Emma Burrows in London contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The IRS is poised to take in hundreds of billions of dollars more in overdue and unpaid taxes than previously anticipated, according to new analysis released Tuesday by the Treasury Department and the IRS.

Tax revenues are expected to rise by as much as $561 billion from 2024 to 2034, thanks to stepped-up enforcement made possible with money from the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act, which became law in August 2022.

The Congressional Budget Office in 2022 estimated that the tens of billions of new IRS funding provided by the IRA would increase revenues by $180.4 billion from 2022 to 2031. The IRS now says that if IRA funding is restored, renewed and diversified, estimated revenues could reach as much as $851 billion from 2024 to 2034.

Administration officials are using the report to promote President Joe Biden’s economic agenda as he campaigns for reelection — and as the IRS continually faces threats to its funding.

“This analysis demonstrates that President Biden’s investment in rebuilding the IRS will reduce the deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars by making the wealthy and big corporations pay the taxes they owe,” National Economic Adviser Lael Brainard said in a statement.

“Congressional Republicans’ efforts to cut IRS funding show that they prioritize letting the wealthiest Americans and big corporations evade their taxes over cutting the deficit,” Brainard said.

The Inflation Reduction Act gave the IRS an $80 billion infusion of funds. However, House Republicans built a $1.4 billion reduction to the IRS into the debt ceiling and budget cuts package passed by Congress last summer. A separate agreement took an additional $20 billion from the IRS over the next two years to divert to other non-defense programs.

Since then, the agency has tried to show how it is spending the money it has left, in hopes of stemming the cuts. New customer service improvements rolled out as the tax season began Jan. 29, and earlier this month the IRS announced that it had recouped half a billion dollars in back taxes from rich tax cheats.

Rep. Jason Smith, the Republican chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said in a statement that the report “calls for even more IRS funding, uses pie-in-the-sky numbers, all without being straightforward about where the burdens of massive new enforcement efforts will fall.” He said increased funding will inevitably result in hundreds of thousands of additional audits for taxpayers making less than $75,000.

After the IRA was signed into law, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen directed IRS leadership not to increase audit rates on people making less than $400,000 a year annually.

Ensuring that people actually pay their taxes is one of the tax collection agency’s biggest challenges. The audit rate of millionaires fell by more than 70% from 2010 to 2019 and the audit rate on large corporations fell by more than 50%, Treasury’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Analysis Greg Leiserson told reporters. IRA funding “is enabling the IRS to reverse this trend,” Leiserson said.

The tax gap — which is the difference between taxes owed and taxes paid — has grown to more than $600 billion annually, according to the IRS.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The IRS on Monday announced January 29 as the official start date of the 2024 tax season, and expects more than 128.7 million tax returns to be filed by the April 15 tax deadline.

The announcement comes as the agency undergoes a massive overhaul, attempting to improve its technology and customer service processes with tens of billions of dollars allocated to the agency through Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law in August 2022.

“As our transformation efforts take hold, taxpayers will continue to see marked improvement in IRS operations in the upcoming filing season,” said IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel in a news release. “IRS employees are working hard to make sure that new funding is used to help taxpayers by making the process of preparing and filing taxes easier.”

Agency leadership says this year more walk-in centers will be open to help taxpayers, enhanced paperless processing will help with IRS correspondence and enhanced individual online accounts will be available for taxpayers.

Additionally, eligible taxpayers will be able to file their 2023 returns online directly with the IRS through a new, electronic direct file pilot. The IRS says it will be rolled out in phases and is expected to be widely available in mid-March.

The IRS expects most refunds to be issued in less than 21 days.

In previous years, the IRS was slammed with massive backlogs of paper tax returns. In June-2022, the IRS faced more than 21 million backlogged paper tax returns, with National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins stating at the time: “The math is daunting.”

Now, with increased funding the IRS expects a smoother filing season with less backlogs, but now it is seeing persistent threats of funding cuts.

Last year’s debt ceiling and budget cuts deal between Republicans and the White House r esulted in $1.4 billion rescinded from the agency’s original $80 billion allocation through the Inflation Reduction Act, and a separate agreement to take $20 billion from the IRS over the next two years and divert those funds to other nondefense programs.