Nearly Half Of IRS Audits Target Poorest Taxpayers, Report Finds

Nearly half of all IRS audits in 2021 targeted the nation’s poorest taxpayers, according to a new study.

A report released by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) on Tuesday said that about 307,000 of the nearly 660,000 audits conducted by the IRS in 2021 were among taxpayers who claimed the Earned Income Tax Credit intended for those making the lowest incomes in the nation, those earning less than $25,000 in total gross receipts.

The poorest families in the study were audited at five times the rate of other Americans.

IRS Audits Poorest Families at Five Times the Rate for Everyone Else @TRACReports

New data show that low-income wage earners with less than $25,000 in total gross receipts are audited at a rate five times higher than for everyone else. 🧵https://t.co/g5P1Xumdo3 pic.twitter.com/DmC0boZV6L

— Austin Kocher, PhD (@ackocher) March 8, 2022

“Even taxpayers with total positive income from $200,000 to $1,000,000 had only 1/3 the odds of audit compared with these lowest-income wage earners: 4.5 out of every 1,000 compared to 13.0 out of every 1,000 of lowest-income earners,” the study noted.- READ MORE