IRS Tax Reporting STATS + Compliance Programs

September 14, 2017
Written by: Fresh Start Tax

 

IMPACT ON TAXPAYERS

This report is a compilation of statistical information reported by the IRS.  The data presented in this report provide taxpayers and stakeholders with information about how the IRS focuses its compliance resources and the impact of those resources on revenue and

 

WHAT TIGTA FOUND

The IRS’s compliance programs continue to be affected by reductions in the number of staff assigned to work cases, although enforcement revenue produced by these programs did not change significantly.

Future State projects are underway to improve processes in a variety of areas, including contacting delinquent taxpayers earlier, developing new processes to deliver inventory to Collection and Examination functions, and optimizing outreach and communication.

In addition, recent legislation has necessitated renewed development in areas such as the

 

Private Debt Collection program, as well as creating processes to coordinate with the Department of State in using passport denial or revocation to promote taxpayer compliance.

After a small decrease in Fiscal Year (FY) 2015, the IRS budget for FY 2016 increased $290 million from $10.9 billion to $11.2 billion.  Meanwhile, the combined number of enforcement personnel decreased between 5 and 8 percent each year since FY 2012 (14,829) and resulted in the lowest number over the past 10 years in FY 2016 (11,195).

Although staffing continued to decline during FY 2016, enforcement revenue collections increased $89 million from $54.2 billion in FY 2015 to $54.3 billion.

At the same time unpaid assessments increased from $411.8 billion in FY 2015, to more than $421.8 billion at the end of FY 2016.

 

Closures of fully paid Taxpayer Delinquency Accounts by the IRS’s Collection Operations have remained essentially unchanged over the last five years, fluctuating between 1.8 to 1.9 million from FY 2012 through FY 2016.

Taxpayer Delinquency Investigation closures decreased for the seventh straight year, from 5.1 million in FY 2010 to 2.3 million in FY 2016.

 

Examination staffing in FY 2016 reached a 20-year low with only 8,847 employees, a decrease of 4 percent from FY 2015 (9,189) and 23 percent lower than FY 2012 (11,432).  In FY 2016, the number of examinations conducted by the IRS decreased approximately 9 percent from those conducted during FY 2015, and was almost 32 percent lower than FY 2012.

The IRS examined 1,035,000 (one of every 143) individual income tax returns in FY 2016.  This was 16 percent less than the number of examinations performed in FY 2015 (1,228,000) and 30 percent fewer examinations than the five-year high reported in FY 2012 of 1,482,000.

Consistent with the decline in individual examinations, fewer corporate tax returns were examined during FY 2016 (21,136) than any year since FY 20

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