by Brett Rowland
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced new enforcement initiatives Friday to crack down on 1,600 millionaires and 75 large companies it said owe hundreds of millions in unpaid taxes.
IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel said the agency will use Inflation Reduction Act funding to focus on high-income earners, partnerships, large corporations, and promoters. He said the IRS won’t increase audit rates for those earning less than $400,000 a year.
“This new compliance push makes good on the promise of the Inflation Reduction Act to ensure the IRS holds our wealthiest filers accountable to pay the full amount of what they owe,” Werfel said in a statement. “The years of underfunding that predated the Inflation Reduction Act led to the lowest audit rate of wealthy filers in our history.”
The IRS will prioritize high-income cases. The High Wealth, High Balance Due Taxpayer Field Initiative will take aim at taxpayers with total positive income above $1 million who have more than $250,000 in recognized tax debt. The agency also will have dozens of revenue officers focusing on these high-end collection cases in fiscal year 2024 and the agency is working to expand that effort by contacting about 1,600 taxpayers who owe hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes, according to the agency.
Werfel said, “There is a sea change taking place at the IRS in every aspect of our operations. Anchored by a deep respect for taxpayer rights, the IRS is deploying new resources towards cutting-edge technology to improve our visibility on where the wealthy shield their income and focus staff attention on the areas of greatest abuse. We will increase our compliance efforts on those posing the greatest risk to our nation’s tax system, whether it’s the wealthy looking to dodge paying their fair share or promoters aggressively peddling abusive schemes. These steps are critical for the future of the nation’s tax system.”
The IRS further plans to expand a pilot program that uses artificial intelligence to take a closer look at the 75 largest partnerships in the U.S. That is expected to start by the end of the month. On average, such partnerships have more than $10 billion in assets.
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Brett Rowland is a reporter at The Center Square.
Photo “Inside the IRS” by Carol Highsmith and “IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel” is by the IRS.
I have no objections to the IRS going after tax payers who already owe back taxes. But if they’re assuming that wealthy people owe back taxes simply because they are wealthy, that’s not equal justice under the law – a concept we are rapidly dismissing.