Report: Change in Mexico's tax laws cited, as IRS announces plans to extradite 79 'tax fugitives' to U.S.

The announcement by the IRS's Criminal Investigation unit came last Thursday, according to Reuters, which noted that until Mexico changed its tax laws in 2020, to enable lawmakers there to extradite "tax fugitives" to the U.S., Mexico had been functioning as "a haven for U.S. tax evaders."

"The IRS said that since June 2021, its Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) branch in Mexico City has extradited eight of the 79 individuals identified for possible prosecution in the United States," Reuters added. 

To read the Reuters report in full, click here.

As this and other publications reported earlier this year, the the IRS has said it plans to hire some 87,000 staff over the next decade. These new employees, Treasury Secretary Charles Rettig stressed, in response to claims that this would result in an unnecessary amount of harrassment of ordinary taxpayers, would in fact be going after "tax evaders, not honest Americans," and that the majority of these new hires would be "those who answer the phones...process individual tax returns" and who "go after high-end taxpayers or corporations who are avoiding their taxes."

According to Reuters, while the IRS "does plan to add new revenue agents... the Treasury has not specified how many [yet]".