Beefed Up

The IRS is poised to boost its record on audits and collecting tax revenue. Commissioner Charles O. Rossotti recently told Congress that increased automation is freeing workers to be retrained and redeployed in enforcement efforts. Here's what to expect:

• More resources will go to auditing partnerships and pass-through entities. The IRS intends to match information from such entities with their owners' returns.

• A closer eye on returns with adjusted gross incomes over $100,000, the quantity of which grew 163 percent from 1993 to 2001.

• The agency's National Research Program (NRP) is devising innovative ways to measure compliance. Just a 0.1 percent improvement in the tax compliance rate would increase revenue by more than $1 billion a year.

The program will begin reviewing nearly 50,000 individual returns in September. If the information the agency has does not sufficiently verify the return as filed, then the IRS will conduct either a correspondence or in-person audit.

Great Falls, Virginia, writer Joan Szabo has reported on tax issues for more than 14 years.