IRS Completed Only 13 High Wealth Audits in 18 Months

[The Straight Story]

IRS Completed Only 13 High Wealth Audits in 18 Months

A special unit created in 2009 by the IRS to audit wealthy Americans with foreign assets has investigated only 13 tax returns to date.

The Global High Wealth Industry Group of the IRS audited two returns in fiscal year 2010 and 11 during the first six months of FY 2011, according to the Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) after reviewing IRS records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

TRAC also found that only 78 agents have been assigned to the new unit, compared to almost 5,600 agents working in rest of the Large Business and International Division, which also audits businesses with assets of $10 million or more.

An IRS spokesman disputed TRAC’s assessment, saying their analysis was “incorrect.” But the official did not offer any figures on how many audits had been performed by the new unit.

http://www.allgov.com/Controversies/ViewNews/IRS_Completed_Only_13_High_Wealth_Audits_in_18_Months_110418

[dkf]

1. Maybe our tax laws are too complicated for agents to audit.

If 78 agents work 18 months and can only get through 13 returns that says something.

[melm00se]

2. i am by no means "rich"

yet my tax return is more than 50 pages in length.

with the highly wealthy, I am certain that their tax forms are phone book in size and utilize some of the more arcane aspects of the tax code.

Based upon that and the fact that there are plenty examples of IRS folks not being able to understand good chunks of the tax code, it is not overly surprising that some of these audits would/could take months to collect and analyze the data and then apply the relevant tax code and determine any additional tax liability (if there is any).

My F-I-L was a forensic accountant for the FBI and he always said that reviewing someone's books for wrong doing is a long and arduous task and if someone really and seriously wants to hide something, the task complexity increases exponentially.

[Mnemosyne]

3. they had no time to audit the wealthy; they were too busy auditing me for $15,000 income last year.

Assholes galore!:grr: