The tax agency, in its long-awaited Strategic Operating Plan, said it will obligate about $8.64 billion of the new funding during the 2023 and 2024 fiscal years, and that 8,782 of the new hires during those years will be enforcement staff.

“The IRS is going to hire more data scientists than they ever have for enforcement purposes,” U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo told reporters, adding that these would complement more traditional tax attorneys and revenue agents in using new data analytics technology to identify audit targets. …

But a significant portion of these new hires will replace the nearly 12,000 IRS employees expected to retire over the next two years — including more than 4,700 enforcement staff, a U.S. Treasury official said.