IRS Audit Rates: Rate for Individual Taxpayers Has Declined But Effect onCompliance Is Unknown

摘要

Every year, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) performs a variety of compliancechecks to ensure the accuracy of information reported by taxpayers on their tax returns. These checks include verifying computations on returns, matching information reported by third parties to income reported by taxpayers on returns, and requesting more information about items on a tax return. Some of the checks were performed on virtually every one of the approximately 125 million returns filed in 1999; others were performed on a small subset of returns. IRS classified about 620,000 of these compliance checks as audits, which range from contacts with taxpayers that are simple enough to be audited through the mail to face-to-face contacts over items that are too complex to be audited through correspondence.