This story appears in the
August 2002 issue of
Entrepreneur.
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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.
