Edited by: TJVNews.com
Now that the deadline for tax filing time is fast approaching, many are concerned that the complicated tax code can lead us to making a major error on our returns. As a result the national anxiety level concerning a possible audit by the IRS is ever present.
With the recently released figures from the Internal Revenue Service, we can breathe a sigh of relief. Painful audits are far and few these days. In the last decade, chances of someone getting audited have shrunk from slim to virtually none, as was reported by Noah Pransky on the lx.com web site.
He writes that, “according to a March 2021 Department of Treasury report, only 1 out of every 225 individual returns (0.4%) was examined by IRS staff, with nearly half of those returns belonging to filers who claimed the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). The audit rate for individuals making less than $200,000 who did not claim the EITC was even lower, approximately 1 out of every 369 filers (0.3%). According to Dept. of Treasury figures, out of more than 199 million tax returns in FY 2019, only 771,095 returns were examined – a drop of 44% from FY 2015.”
While the IRS is still on the hunt for big time tax fraud, the IRS has way less employees on staff who are charged with watching for it as it had in previous decades, according to the lx.com web site. Fewer customer service representatives whose job it is to assist taxpayers comprehend the complex tax system means that fewer audits will be conducted.
The lx.com report revealed that “the number of IRS revenue agents shrunk 43% between Sept. 2010 (14,749 paid employees) and Sept. 2020 (8,350 paid employees), according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University.”
Speaking to lx.com, Chuck Marr, Senior Director of Federal Tax Policy for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning Washington think tank said that, “Budget cuts have severely undermined the IRS’s ability to enforce the nation’s tax laws & help taxpayers navigate a system that relies on voluntary compliance. A rebuilt IRS could help fund key national priorities…and restore public trust in the fairness of the tax system.”
The lx.com report revealed that as part of his American Families Plan, President Biden, “has called for more scrutiny of America’s more than 637,000 million-dollar tax filers, as well as large corporations, who have also seen far fewer audits in recent years. Nearly two-thirds of the 755 largest corporations in the country – those with over $20 billion in assets – were not audited last year, compared to 93% which were audited in 2012, according to Syracuse’s TRAC.”
The Biden administration proposed an $80 billion increase to IRS funding over the next decade, with three-quarters of the spending earmarked for enforcement, claiming the commitment will provide the government a return of four dollars for every dollar invested.
