[Jesse]

The reason the IRS is bearing down on the so-called working poor is because of their fraudulent claims for the Earned Income Tax Credit. Congratulations to the IRS for cracking down on this Democrat welfare fraud using the tax system.

Agreed. In fact, the "working poor" don't have federal tax liabilities since they get this EITC. I think another reason audits for high income earners are down is because the ruthless efficiency of the tax system is such that most high income types are not in a cash business, and with all the reporting requirements and need for tax ID numbers, etc. the IRS probably knows as much about people's income and expenses as the taxpayer. No need to audit except for show when you know everthing already.

[speekinout]

I will go off to look for the reference, but a story that appeared rather recently refers to a man who was processing IRS returns for Blacks so they could get "reparations".
He's in jail, of course. But if the IRS doesn't "audit" the returns, they simply pay what you claim. They paid these phony "reparations" for a surprising number of Blacks, and many of them were lower income.
The IRS is now "auditing" the returns for people they think are making the claim (and, no, I don't know what his scheme was, how so many got away with it, or how the IRS knows which returns to audit). But this scheme has certainly resulted in thousands more audits for lowerincome tax payers.