The IRS has collected more than half a billion in back taxes from delinquent millionaires.

Couple of questions. 1) Who is "we"? 2) What "agents" were hired? Special agents? Revenue agents? Those are completely different jobs with different roles, but neither has anything to do with Collection. But maybe you're talking about a state revenue department or something. 

1) Tom's referring to the popcorn wagon where he used to work before they canned him. Six years ago, and he can't get over it.

2) Because the IRS uses private collection agencies to attempt to collect on delinquent accounts (by order of Congress, 2015), the number of employees who transfer those accounts--as in, are directly involved in collection efforts--is fairly small overall. As of December 2023, the IRS had added 83 employees to its collection division(s) in that year. A wee bit short of Tom's "reported" 50,000.

3) Don't forget, Tom's an idiot.

4) As other posters have remarked, it's not about a difficulty in collection--collection agencies are actually pretty good at getting people to pony up. It's about a chronic staffing shortage that has forced the IRS to let many accounts go uncollected. And of course, if someone doesn't pay or underpays taxes and five years goes by, they'll understandably think that the debt will never actually be enforced or collected.

I don't think IRS uses the private collection agencies anymore. I was there when that program started and it was a disaster. Even when it was operating, they only handled the smallest, simplest cases. I believe they were limited to asking for the money a couple of times by phone and then sending the case back to IRS.  As I recall, that program folded shortly after it started. 

Years ago (probably 40 or more) my BFF's husband worked for the IRS (Fed) as, I think, an "investigator."  Maybe one of those "special agents"?  She worried about what he had to do, said it was "dangerous", sometimes night work, sometimes armed.  Of course my only concept about the IRS was people checking tax return forms, etc.  I just recall it making an impression on me, that there was a whole lot in the world that I was oblivious of.  

Candy    

Well, if they ended that program, that would have automatically created a need for more staffing--but the RepubliQ have dedicated themselves to choking off their funding.

I'm sure that it takes extended and aggressive efforts to collect on the biggest cases. But I suspect that's where the greatest ROI in terms of manpower and resources is found. Probably just nailing the top 100 tax cheats would give the government a substantial revenue boost. Hell, squeezing the Orange Turd dry would be worth several hundred million.

The IRS partners with the FBI on some of the most important investigations, in cases where there may be criminal tax fraud (as opposed to just owing a lot of money, which is a kind of blurred line). I can't really imagine an IRS agent doing "field work" of the type you describe, but maybe it does still happen.

I'm thinking of Joe Bracket, Tax Investigator, sidling into a darkened office building late at night, gun drawn, and when he catches the perpetrator: "Freeze! Or I'll amortize ya."

There are/were a lot of misconceptions about the actual people who work for IRS. When I was a field collection person (Revenue Officer) I spent 75% of my time in the field trying to collect taxes. Most of my inventory consisted of businesses that withheld SS and income tax from employees and then failed to remit the money to IRS. At that time, ROs were more likely to be assaulted or killed than any other Federal employee. We didn't carry weapons and (mostly) drove our own personal cars to field calls. 

Special agents investigate criminal tax fraud. They do carry weapons and are sometimes pressed into service as armed escorts for Collection. Criminal tax cases are notoriously hard to win, but they keep bringing them for the (questionable) impact on compliance. 

As far as joint operations with FBI....from my admittably biased perspective....that's the kind of thing that happens in instances where FBI wants to take all the credit for somebody else's work.