IRS: 89K Fewer Audits in 2013 Because of ‘Sequestration and Furloughs’

Photo Credit: APBy Terence P. Jeffrey.

Because of “sequestration and furloughs” the number of individuals audited by the Internal Revenue Service fell by 80,000 in fiscal 2013 and the number of businesses audited fell by 9,000, according to the IRS’s Budget in Brief released this week.

“As a result of the impacts of sequestration and furloughs, the IRS delivered key enforcement programs below 2012 levels,” said the budget document. “Total individual audits fell 5 percent from 1.48 million to 1.40 million, while audits of high income individuals declined from 179,000 to 172,000. Business return audits dropped 13 percent from 70,000 to 61,000”

Because of the decline, says the IRS, the federal government pulled in only $9.83 billion in revenue from audits in fiscal 2013, the lowest in ten years.

However, the IRS’s overall revenue from enforcement actions increased by $3.1 billion, climbing from $50.2 billion in fiscal 2012 to $53.3 billion in fiscal 2013.

Read more this story HERE.

____________________________________________________________________________

The IRS’s behavior taxes credulity

By George F. Will.

What’s been said of confession — that it is good for one’s soul but bad for one’s reputation — can also be true of testifying to Congress, so Lois Lerner has chosen to stay silent. Hers, however, is an eloquent silence.

The most intrusive and potentially most punitive federal agency has been politicized; the IRS has become an appendage of Barack Obama’s party. Furthermore, congruent with exhortations from some congressional Democrats, it is intensifying its efforts to suffocate groups critical of progressives, by delaying what once was the swift, routine granting of tax-exempt status.

So, the IRS, far from repenting of its abusive behavior, is trying to codify the abuses. It hopes to nullify with new rules the existing legal right of 501(c)(4) groups, many of which are conservative, to participate in politics. The proposed rules have drawn more than 140,000 comments, most of them complaints, some from liberals wary of IRS attempts to broadly define “candidate-related political activity” and to narrow the permissible amount of this.

Lerner is, so far, the face of this use of government to punish political adversaries. She knows what her IRS unit did and how it intersects with the law, and for a second time she has exercised her constitutional right to remain silent rather than risk self-incrimination. The public has a right to make reasonable inferences from her behavior.

And from Obama’s. After calling the IRS behavior “outrageous,” he now says there is not a “smidgen” of evidence of anything to be outraged about. He knows this even though the supposed investigation of the IRS behavior has not been completed, or perhaps even begun. The person he chose to investigate his administration is an administration employee and a generous donor to his campaigns.

Read more this story HERE.