Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Danny Wuerfel testifies to the House Appropriations Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, May 7, 2024.
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“The IRS has collected $1 billion from billionaires, successfully launching a strategic new program and demonstrating that we can achieve the greatest return on investment,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told reporters at a news conference.
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If funding is maintained, IRS investments in enforcement, technology, and data could be up to $851 billion by 2034The two agencies made the estimates in February.
But the IRS funding infusion enacted through the Inflation Control Act of 2022 continues to attract criticism, especially among Republican lawmakers.
“For the past decade, the IRS has not had the resources or manpower to enable its compliance teams to pursue high-income individuals who were aware of their delinquent taxes,” IRS Commissioner Danny Wuerfel said at a press conference.
Warfel said that before the Inflation Control Act, budget constraints meant that negligible amounts of unpaid taxes were collected from people with similar incomes. “The difference is literally night and day,” Warfel said.
The audit rate for taxpayers earning more than $1 million was 0.7% in 2019, the most recent data available, compared with 7.2% in 2011. IRS (Internal Revenue Service).
Both the U.S. Government Accountability Office and the U.S. Treasury Department’s Inspector General for Tax Administration Recently scrutinized I.R.S. High Paying Audit Process. While both reports address the audit selection process, the Treasury report specifically noted elevated no-change rates in audits of certain high-income filers.
“Our goal has always been to eliminate the risk of a zero-balance audit,” Warfel said at a news conference about the agency’s report.
This latest announcement comes less than a month after the IRS and Treasury Department announced plans to close “major tax loopholes” exploited by large, complex partnerships, a crackdown that the agencies say could raise $50 billion in tax revenue over the next decade.
