 |
|
IRS records through February, which were obtained and published by the Syracuse University Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), showed that the agency performed 51.3% of its audits on taxpayers who claimed an earned income tax credit.
That was up from last February, when the IRS conducted 44.1% of its audits on low-income filers, and all of last fiscal year, when it conducted 46.6% of its audits on the group. These taxpayers comprised fewer than 15% of all returns, according to IRS data.
The disparities were even starker when excluding in-person audits, as the agency conducts most of its audits through audits conducted over the phone or through written letters. So far this fiscal year, the IRS has issued 58.1% of its correspondence audits to low-income wage earners, up from 51.6% at this time last year and 53.6% at the end of the previous fiscal year.
In that year, low-income taxpayers were five times likelier than all other taxpayers to receive a correspondence audit. Through the first five months of this fiscal year, they’ve been more than six times as likely to receive a correspondence audit.
The latest Internal Revenue Service (IRS) statistics covering federal income tax audits through February of 2022 reveal that the agency is continuing to target audits on the poorest wage earners.
|
|
|
|
