Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) released data provided to it by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) on audits performed by the agency in fiscal year 2022. Despite the infusion of new funding earmarked for the IRS via last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, the agency continued historic trends of hassling primarily low-income taxpayers, with relatively few millionaires and billionaires getting caught up in the audit sweep, Reason reports.
“The taxpayer class with unbelievably high audit rates—five and a half times virtually everyone else—were low-income wage-earners taking the earned income tax credit,” reported TRAC, noting that the poorest taxpayers are “easy marks in an era when IRS increasingly relies upon correspondence audits yet doesn’t have the resources to assist taxpayers or answer their questions.”
In fact, “if one ignores the fiction of auditing a millionaire through simply sending a letter through the mail, the odds that millionaires received a regular audit by a revenue agent (1.1%) was actually less than the audit rate of the targeted lowest income wage-earners whose audit rate was 1.27 percent!” Read more: Reason.
They went after me. We’re barely able to make it till the end of month! Yom Tov time is a killer. Camp costs, fuggedaboudit! But the IRS came after me like an elephant! They’re ruthless.
You will own nothing. You will be a nothing. Only the wealthiest white elitists will rule over the peasants.
“On our very first bill, we’re going to repeal 87,000 IRS agents,” McCarthy said.
The senate won’t agree, therefore it’s dead on arrival and a waste of tax payer dollars to even write such a bill. They should try to accomplish something that will actually move forward for a change.
The taxpayer class with unbelievably high audit rates—five and a half times virtually everyone else—were low-income wage-earners taking the earned income tax credit,” reported TRAC
As someone who worked in many low and high income tax preparation firms this makes a lot of sense. Firstly there simply was much more obvious fraud among those who were receiving earned income credit. Secondly it makes sense fo the government to be tougher with people who are asking them for money than to be tough with people who they are asking for money from. Thirdly it is a lot easier and cost effective to audit someone who is low income than someone who asks has a complex return.
Another point is that when they audit earned income credit recipients there are usually no threats if you ignore the audit. Worst they will do is not send the money. Whereas when they audit higher income tax payers all sorts of penalties are included.
Easy targets. Sad but true. And every penny needs to be accounted for beyond reason or requirement. Yes, they are ruthless.
One problem the non-rich have, that is they don’t have someone to count all the pennies and make sure it matches up. Therefore they go after us poor fools as it’s more worthwhile for us t just pay a little more and say I’m sorry, then pay someone even more money to try and save us the penalty. The next problem is, once you pay the first time, they mark you for every 5-10 years as an easy target.
When the IRS audits someone receiving earned income credit all they are asking him for is to mail them a few papers. When the IRS audits a wealthy business owner they are asking to turn his whole business upside for a few weeks while he gets everything ready and then explains everything to them.
One IRS agent can probably finish the audit of five low income taxpayers in one day. The same agent could need five weeks to fully audit a wealthy business owner.
What a low income taxpayer considers to be an “audit” is something a wealthy taxpayer considers to be a nuisance letter from the IRS. The article is going with that standard when making the comparison.