Pascrell Lambastes Plummeting Audit Rates for Wealthy Tax Cheats

New GAO report finds IRS pursuing rich tax scofflaws at pathetic rates

WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ-09), the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Oversight, today highlighted a new report he requested from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) finding that Internal Revenue Service (IRS) auditing rates have steadily plummeted over the last ten years, disproportionally benefiting wealthy Americans.

In October 2020, Chairman Pascrell requested GAO analyze individual taxpayer examinations over the last 10 years by income levels. GAO will formally present their report at an Oversight Subcommittee hearing on May 18, 2022, titled “Taxpayer Fairness Across the IRS.”

“The findings by the GAO on IRS auditing rates are another five-alarm fire bell for our national tax system,” said Chairman Pascrell. “Over the last decade, accountability for the wealthiest tax cheats has plummeted so far it almost hits the floor. Looking at the numbers, a tax filer making less than $25,000 a year is more than twice as likely to be audited as someone with between $200,000 and $500,000 in income.  I worry well-off taxpayers are not going to be pursued at the rate things are going. Make no mistake: these trends are the logical result of Republican policies to gut tax enforcement in America so the wealthy can avoid paying their fair share.

“Americans’ confidence in their tax system will itself continue to collapse so long as the rich do whatever they want. Building a truly fair system demands fixing the IRS so it can hold rich tax cheats accountable. Creating tax fairness is essential for our economy and for American democracy. I thank GAO for its work on this enlightening report and look forward to its testimony tomorrow,” concluded Pascrell.

The following are highlights from GAO’s report:

• In 2019, the IRS audited 0.77 percent of taxpayers who claimed the EITC and 0.4 percent of those with incomes under $25,000, compared with 0.17 percent of those with incomes between $25,000 and $199,999 and 0.17 percent of those with incomes between $200,000 and $499,999.

• From 2010 to 2021, the majority of the total amount of additional taxes recommended after an audit came from taxpayers with incomes under $200,000.

• The IRS has examined a decreasing rate of individual income tax returns with the largest audit rate reduction for taxpayers with incomes of $200,000 and above.  The declining audit rates raise concerns about the potential decline in taxpayer compliance.

• The IRS has had difficulty replacing audit staff lost to attrition and retirements.  With inflation and mandatory pay raises, the IRS’s 2021 budget has declined by 22 percent in real terms from the fiscal year 2010 levels and overall IRS staffing will equal levels from 1973—nearly 50 years ago.  The IRS estimates 15 percent of current tax examiners and revenue agents will retire in the next 3 years.

• Fewer hours per audit are needed for lower-income taxpayers because many do not respond to the IRS’s correspondence or provide inadequate responses.  According to the 2021 Report to Congress by the National Taxpayer Advocate (NTA), in 2019,  for those with under $50,000 in income, the IRS closed 35 percent of audits without a response from the taxpayer and 14 percent of these involved a notice that was not deliverable to the taxpayer.

• Except for those with over $5 million in income, audits of the lowest-income taxpayers resulted in higher amounts of recommended tax per audit hour.

• The IRS collected about one-half of all recommended taxes between 2011 and 2020 with collection rates generally higher for those taxpayers with incomes under $200,000, including EITC recipients.  This is likely attributable to the fact that the IRS conducts EITC audits before issuing refunds.  High-income audits, according to the IRS, are more likely to have recommended tax amounts that are abated or more difficult to fully collect.

As Oversight Chairman, Pascrell has made reform of America’s two-tier tax system one of his highest priorities on the Ways and Means Committee. On December 7, 2021, Pascrell convened an oversight hearing on how wealthy families increasingly transfer property for generations through trusts and offshore accounts to avoid ever paying taxes on vast fortunes. The hearing shed new light on how Americans are using states like South Dakota and Wyoming over Switzerland and the Cayman Islands as favored tax havens to hide their money right within U.S. borders.

On March 25, 2022, Chairman Pascrell published an op-ed in Bloomberg highlighting his work to overhaul the “Swiss cheese” tax code. Pascrell is the main sponsor of separate bills to close the two worst loopholes in the federal tax code: the Carried Interest Fairness Act (H.R. 1068), which will end a loophole that allows Wall Street executives to pay lower tax rates than their secretaries, and H.R. 2286, legislation to abolish the stepped-up basis, or billionaires bonanza loophole, which lets millionaires and billionaires leave large inheritances without paying fair taxes.

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