IRS millionaire audits decline

Here’s a little good news for millionaires worried about the ramifications of tax time as April 15 draws ever nearer: your chances of being audited have decreased significantly in recent years.

Government records show the number of audits of America’s wealthiest taxpayers — those filing returns for $1 million or more — declined from a peak of 39,753 in 2015 to 16,305 in 2018, TRAC, the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, reported Thursday.

“Billions of dollars are arguably at stake, as is American faith in the fairness of our federal tax system,” TRAC researchers wrote. They noted that the federal government turned up an extra $5.1 billion in unpaid taxes in 2010 when the IRS audited 32,494 millionaire tax returns.

The folks at TRAC attributed the downturn in audits to years of budget cutbacks at the IRS, where staffing levels were reduced by 22 percent between 2010 and 2018.

Find out more about how that has resulted in fewer audits of giant corporations and even fewer criminal prosecutions against the worst offenders in the TRAC report.