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The report, from Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Records Clearinghouse, or TRAC, found that 97 out of every 100 individual taxpayers who reported over $1 million in income weren’t audited last year, based on IRS statistics. In fiscal year 2010, such audits turned up $5.1 billion in unreported taxes. Now with just half the audits, the government uncovered only $1.9 billion in unreported taxes in fiscal 2018.

The Internal Revenue Service Has Been Dealing with a Series of Budget Cuts over the past Decade, and It Has Been Forced to Reduce the Number of Audits It Conducts As Other Priorities, ...Have Taken a Greater Priority.

Audits of Millionaires: The current situation here is the most alarming because the latest data reveal that 97 out of every 100 taxpayers reporting over a million dollars of income were not audited last year. And for these millionaires the puny number of IRS audits has been cut in half since 2010. See Figure 1.

In FY 2010, such audits turned up $5.1 billion in unreported taxes. Even then 92 out of every 100 millionaires were not audited. Now with just half the audits, the government uncovered only $1.9 billion in unreported taxes in FY 2018. Few audits means many millionaires escape paying billions of dollars owed the U.S. Treasury.  

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Audits of Corporate Giants: More than half of the 633 largest corporations in the country - those with over $20 billion in assets - were not even audited last year. This is the first year that the audit rate has slipped below 50 percent. As recently as 2010, nearly all such returns (96%) were being examined by IRS. See Figure 2.  Audits in 2010 of large corporations (>$250 million in assets) turned up $23.7 billion dollars in unreported taxes. This had dropped in half to just $12.5 billion during FY 2018.  

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Criminal Prosecutions: IRS referrals of taxpayers for criminal prosecution relative to population size have plummeted by 75 percent in the last twenty-five years, dropping by 63 percent in just the last five years. See Figure 3.

Figure 3. Odds of IRS Referral for Criminal Prosecution Has Plummeted
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The Internal Revenue Service on March 12, 2019 warned taxpayers in IR-2019-36 to avoid falsely inflating deductions or credits on tax returns as part of its 2019 list of the “Dirty Dozen” tax scams.

Taxpayers should watch for areas frequently targeted by unscrupulous tax preparers include overstating deductions such as charitable contributions, medical expenses, padding business expenses or falsely claiming the Earned Income Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit and other tax benefits.

Padding deductions and credits is part of this year’s “Dirty Dozen” list of common tax scams. Taxpayers may encounter these schemes any time, but many of them peak during the tax filing season as people prepare their tax returns or hire others to help with their taxes.

The IRS reminds taxpayers that they are still personally at risk, even if someone suggests using these strategies or a paid tax preparer actually prepares their return. By the time the IRS contacts the taxpayer about these problems, the promoter or preparer is often long gone.

Avoids scams, file an accurate return

Preparing an accurate tax return is a taxpayer’s best defense against scams – and the best way to avoid triggering an audit. Significant penalties may apply to those who file incorrect returns including:

• 20 percent of the disallowed amount for filing an erroneous claim for a refund or credit.
• $5,000 if the IRS determines a taxpayer has filed a “frivolous tax return.” This is a return that does not include enough information to figure the correct tax or that contains information clearly showing that the tax reported is substantially incorrect.
• In addition to the full amount of tax owed, a taxpayer could be assessed a penalty of 75 percent of the amount owed if the underpayment on the tax return resulted from tax fraud.

Taxpayers may be subject to criminal prosecution and be brought to trial for actions such as willful failure to file a return; supply information; or pay any tax due; fraud and false statements; preparing and filing a fraudulent return and identity theft.

One way for taxpayers to ensure they file an accurate tax return and claim only the tax benefits they’re eligible to receive is by using tax preparation software.

According to researchers and former government auditors, budget cuts within the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which have cut enforcement staff by a third, may be responsible for the drop in the number of tax evasion cases pursued in recent years.  

In 2017, 795 cases were brought be the IRS’ criminal division, representing a drop of almost a quarter since 2010. 

Audits and criminal referrals are down sharply, since Congress cut the tax agency’s budget and management changed priorities. The answer, researchers and former government auditors say, is simple. The IRS pursues fewer cases of tax evasion than it did less than 10 years ago.

In 2017, the IRS’s criminal division brought 795 cases in which tax fraud was the primary crime, a decline of almost a quarter since 2010. “That is a startling number,” Don Fort, the chief of criminal investigations for the IRS, acknowledged at an NYU tax conference in June 2018.

Bringing cases against people who evade taxes on legal income is central to the revenue service’s mission. In addition to recouping lost revenue, such cases are supposed “to influence taxpayer behavior for the hundreds of millions of American citizens filing tax returns,” Fort said. With fewer cases, experts fear, Americans will get the message that it’s all right to break the law.

Starting in 2011, Republicans in Congress repeatedly cut the IRS’s budget, forcing the agency to reduce its enforcement staff by a 1/3.

The result is huge losses for the government. Business owners don’t pay $125 billion in taxes each year that they owe, according to IRS estimates. That’s enough to finance the departments of State, Energy and Homeland Security, with NASA tossed in for good measure. Unlike wage earners who have their income separately reported to the IRS, business owners are often on the honor system.
The IRS declined to comment on its enforcement efforts.

Criminal referrals were always rare and are becoming rarer still, dropping from 589 referrals in 2012 to 328 in 2016. With the government conducting 1.2 million audits in 2016, that’s one criminal referral for roughly every 3,600 audits.

In recent years, the IRS has also been pulled away from classic tax dodging cases by soaring rates of identity theft. IRS management assigned scores of agents to chase perpetrators who used stolen identities to collect tax refunds.

The IRS allowed Americans with foreign accounts to voluntarily disclose them and pay a smaller penalty than they would have had they been caught hiding the information. Some 56,000 people participated, netting the government $11.1 billion. The IRS’s criminal division also brought several cases against people for concealing accounts.

For all this success, there has been little change in the amount of wealth stashed overseas. Americans have about $1.2 trillion of personal assets in tax havens, according to data compiled by Gabriel Zucman, an assistant professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and two colleagues. It’s unclear what portion has been disclosed to the IRS.

Moreover, the IRS has made little use of new weapons in the fight against wealth hidden overseas. In 2010, President Barack Obama signed a law that was supposed to provide a crucial tool for government auditors and prosecutors. That law, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, required banks with American account holders to report information to the United States. Like employers filing W-2 forms about their workers, these reports would force account holders to come clean.
Eight years later, the program is still getting off the ground. Countries around the world have signed agreements, and more than 100,000 foreign banks have sent information to the United States.

But “there is no ongoing compliance impact of the FATCA at this time,” according to a report by the inspector general for the IRS.

Marini & Associates, P.A. 

 

 for a FREE Tax Consultation Contact US at

www.TaxAid.com or www.OVDPLaw.com

or Toll Free at 888-8TaxAid (888 882-9243).

According to the DoJ,  an Alabama Woman Sentenced to 46 Months in Prison for Stealing Over $700,000 From Her Employer and Failing to Report Income on Her Tax Returns.

paying taxes on your stolen income?

According to court documents, from February 2007 through May 2014, Alita Baker Edeker, a resident of Valley, Alabama, embezzled $700,000 of her employer’s funds by diverting payments from clients of the company to debit and credit cards she controlled.

Edeker made false entries in the company’s books and records in order to conceal her embezzlement.

After embezzling the funds, Edeker willfully filed false tax returns for tax years 2011, 2012, and 2013 that did not report the money. (WOW!).

In addition to the term of imprisonment imposed, Edeker was ordered to serve three years of supervised release and to pay restitution in the amounts of $819,497.29 to her employer and $101,604 to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

Have a Criminal Tax Problem?    

 

 

Contact the Tax Lawyers at 

Marini & Associates, P.A. 

 for a FREE Tax Consultation Contact US at

www.TaxAid.com or www.OVDPLaw.com

or Toll Free at 888-8TaxAid (888 882-9243).