Sunday, March 29, 2009
So much for the Internal Revenue Service getting tough with the wealthy. Last year, the IRS proudly proclaimed that it had substantially increased the number of audits in 2007 for those Americans earning a million dollars or more a year. But when a watchdog group got hold of the actual records from the tax collection agency, it turned out the numbers of audits had actually gone down, not up.
A January 2008 announcement from the IRS declared that “during 2007 the IRS audited 84 percent more returns of individuals with incomes of $1 million or more than during 2006.” Later, however, tax officials admitted that audit statistics for 2006 and 2007 had to be revised downward because of “misreporting” discovered in the agency’s books. In reality, the Transactional Record Access Clearinghouse found, IRS audits of millionaires for 2007 declined anywhere from 19% to 35%.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
IRS Audit Rate for Millionaires Plummets (Transactional Record Access Clearinghouse)
Fiscal Year 2007 Enforcement and Services Results (IRS press release) (PDF)
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