By Stephen Dinan The Washington Times Thursday, December 12, 2024
The IRS on Thursday said it has sweated an additional $1.3 billion from wealthy tax cheats, thanks to enhanced reviews and audits paid for by the budget-climate law President Biden signed two years ago.
The tax agency said criminal investigations and civil cases have earned an additional $3.4 billion for Uncle Sam, for a total increased haul of $4.7 billion.
IRS leaders are under pressure to deliver after Congress and Mr. Biden pumped tens of billions of dollars into the agency in 2022, saying they expected the money to pay off with even bigger returns in tax revenue. Congressional Democrats, who approved the money without assistance from Republicans, said they wanted to focus heavily on wealthy taxpayers who weren’t meeting their obligations.
The IRS said the $1.3 billion came from just those kinds of targets: “high-income, high-wealthy individuals who have not paid overdue tax debt or filed tax returns.”
Tax officials said that in the past three months, they found $120 million by using third-party data to spot people who were earning at least $400,000 but didn’t file returns.
On the criminal front, the agency said it seized $1.2 billion in assets and won court restitution judgments for an additional $1.7 billion in fiscal year 2024.
“The IRS continues to show dramatic progress on a wide array of the agency’s transformation efforts,” IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel said in announcing the gains Thursday.
Mr. Werfel has said the IRS suffered from years of neglect as its budget was cut and it shed staff. The result was fewer people being audited and more tax cheats getting away with it, all while customer service hit abysmal levels.
President-elect Donald Trump has announced plans to nominate former Missouri Rep. Billy Long to serve as the next IRS commissioner.
The Inflation Reduction Act, which Mr. Biden signed in 2022, was intended to reverse all of that, surging money to improve customer service, hire more auditors and go after tax cheats, with the hope of netting tens of billions of dollars in new money over the next decade.
The IRS says it’s made significant strides on the customer service side, with phone calls now being answered more often than not and with an IRS-sponsored direct-file option for some tax returns.
On Thursday, the agency hailed its expansion of digital tools, saying it’s finalized more initiatives in the last two years than it did in the previous two decades.
That includes a mobile-friendly version of the IRS’s refund-tracker and dozens of forms that can now be filled out more easily on mobile devices.
