"Unless we've got you in our files as trying to start a conservative non-profit - then, heh heh, you're #1 on our hit list!"
Posted on 11/11/2015 5:38:21 PM PST by RKBA Democrat
The Internal Revenue Service, with 22 percent fewer agents than it had five years ago, on Tuesday reported its lowest percentage of tax returns audited in 11 years.
Commissioner John Koskinen told a gathering of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants that his agency is “especially concerned about the effect that the reduction in our workforce has had on audits. The IRS completed about 1.2 million individual audits in fiscal 2015. That’s 13,700 fewer than the previous year. Even more disturbing, the decline in audits in 2015 was not a one-year aberration. The number for 2015 was 350,000 below five years ago. That’s a drop of 22 percent, and corresponds exactly to the number of revenue agents, which is also down 22 percent since 2010.â€
The staff cuts of some 15,000, he continued, came as the number of income tax returns filed by individuals topped 146 million, an increase of almost 3 percent from 2010.
“Not surprisingly, we’re seeing clear evidence of a longstanding decline in revenue coming from audits,†Koskinen said in his speech. “Between 2005 and 2010, the revenue generated from audits averaged $14.7 billion annually. But since 2010, it has averaged only $10.5 billion a year, which is a drop of nearly 30 percent, and translates to more than $20 billion in uncollected revenue over the past five years.â€
The percentage of individual tax returns audited to detect errors or fraud has declined steadily. “For many years, the likelihood that an individual’s return would be audited was about 1 percent,†the commissioner said, “but in 2013 it fell below 1 percent and for fiscal 2015 it fell to 0.84 percent, the lowest level since fiscal 2004.
Koskinen called the budget cuts his agency’s No. 1 problem, repeating past comments addressed to Congress about poor phone service to taxpayers and practitioners, aging computer systems and added responsibilities imposed by new laws. “There is a limit to how much we can do to find efficiencies,†he said. “In 2015, we reached the point of having to make very critical performance tradeoffs. There was simply no way around the severity of these budget cuts without taking difficult steps, which have had negative impacts on service, enforcement and information technology.â€
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, a frequent critic of the IRS who serves on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, on Wednesday was asked about the budget strains and said, “Maybe if the IRS had spent less time and money targeting the First Amendment rights of conservative groups around the country, then staff might have been able to better focus on doing the jobs that taxpayers actually pay them to perform.â€
In an email to Government Executive, Jordan added that, “The IRS complains about having spent $14 million on the investigation into its targeting of conservatives. But this money was not used to preserve documents or clean up the department’s act. It seems to me like it was only used on efforts to obstruct our attempts to get to the truth.â€
Here's a look at the IRS' recent auditing numbers: (table embedded at article)
Good. It will be easier for President Cruz to fire them all.
Don’t worry. They still have enough to go after Republicans.
They mostly rely on computerized matching of W2 and 1099 forms. Just as long as what you put down as money received has the same numbers as the forms they received, you can then use the most favorable interpretation of the laws in your deductions and calculations, provided you tell the truth and act in good faith. If your numbers add up, they are very unlikely to be challenged.
With 300 million people in this country, one percent is still 3 million audits.
There are not 300 million individual returns filed in this country.
Hmmm, the business got audited last year...
I don’t believe a word of it...don’t screw around.
If you list your job as “community organizer,” you have a 0% chance of audit.
Oh, the horror!!!
I don’t understand. Didn’t Obama go into his Obamacare stash to hire on thousands of new IRS agents? Were they all dispatched to investigate the tax exempt status of conservative organizations? Are they off having sex orgies like the secret service and the EPA? Where are they and why aren’t they doing their job?
The IRS has nerve complaining about budget cuts. They decide all they have time for is determining names of the conservative members of tax exempt organizations and auditing them. When republicans see entrenched democrats using the govt. to eliminate enemies and opposition, it’s their right to cut off the money spigot to the IRS.
thk god f@#$%^&*() a$%^&*() h$%^&*()
and you really don’t need to file as long as you don’t owe money
I don’t believe this. We left one little thing out and got an immediate notice we had to correct it “in two weeks” or pay an $18,000 fine. The computers are scanning every one of these. Maybe they are talking about a human audit or something?
The Internal Revenue Service, with 22 percent fewer agents than it had five years ago
I thought they had to hire thousands for Obamacare.
They wouldn't lie would they? Friggin traitors, the whole gdamn lot of them.
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