The IRS has said it will “absolutely not” be increasing audit scrutiny on small businesses or middle-income Americans amid concerns over Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act, which provides nearly $80 billion in IRS funding, including $45.6 billion for “enforcement.”
IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig made the comments in a letter to members of the Senate on Aug. 4 (pdf) in which he stated that the extra resources will “get us back to historical norms in areas of challenge for the agency,” such as large corporate and global high-net-worth taxpayers and multinational taxpayers with international tax issues.
Those issues, he said, would require “sophisticated, specialized teams in place that are able to unpack complex structures and identify noncompliance.”
“These resources are absolutely not about increasing audit scrutiny on small businesses or middle-income Americans,” Rettig added. “As we’ve been planning, our investment of these enforcement resources is designed around the Department of the Treasury’s directive that audit rates will not rise relative to recent years for households making under $400,000.” Read more…