Putting TRAC to Work
  Legal and Scholarly
Journal of Accountancy
April 11, 2013

Significant decline in IRS staff leads to fewer audits
By Sally P. Schreiber, J.D.


The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), reports that the IRS plans to expend 18% fewer staff hours auditing large businesses with assets of more than $10 million in fiscal year 2013 (which ends Sept. 30) than it did in FY 2011. These lower numbers do not take into account the effects of budget cuts that resulted from the sequester. TRAC, a data research organization at Syracuse University, based the report on information it has received after filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) suit against the IRS. The report also notes ongoing reductions in IRS staff in the individual tax area, explaining that the number of IRS employees fell 23% between 1992 and 2012, while the number of tax returns filed increased by 27% during the same period. Some of the reduction in IRS staff is compensated for by the increase in correspondence audits, Form 1099 matching programs, and expanded math error correction authority, but it is impossible to tell how much. The report says that an individual’s chance of being audited declined 7% from FY 2011 to FY 2012 and that face-to-face audits declined by 10%.


Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, Syracuse University
Copyright 2013
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