Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Mark Everson said he’s happy with the agency’s enforcement efforts for the 2006 fiscal year -- with tax collections totaling some $48.7 billion.Everson, who’s now been on the job for three and a half years, has long stressed the need to improve on his agency’s collection efforts. “The bottom line for our enforcement efforts shows that dollars collected rose again last year,” he said in a statement.
Following a 10 percent year-over-year boost in enforcement revenues for the 2005 fiscal year, to $47.3 billion, the IRS collected $48.7 billion in the 2006 fiscal year, a nearly 3 percent increase. Everson said exam dollars were down slightly this year because of a bump from the Son of Boss settlement initiative in 2005, and also noted that the agency continued to focus on auditing the returns of wealthier individuals. For the 2006 year, millionaires faced a 1-in-16 chance of being audited.
Among the agency’s other audit enforcement statistics for the 2006 fiscal year ended Sept. 30:
- Total individual returns audited increased by over 6 percent, to nearly 1.3 million, the highest number since 1998;
- Audits of individuals with incomes over $1 million increased to more than 17,000, a nearly 33 percent increase from a year ago;
- Audits of individuals with incomes over $100,000 increased to more than 257,000, an 18 percent from a year ago; and,
- While the agency did increase its use of correspondence exams, the number of field audits it conducted over the last year increased nearly 23 percent from 2005.
Everson also reported an increase in IRS efforts to review S corporations and partnerships (increasing 34 percent and 15 percent, respectively), while its activity involving small business and large corporations remained relatively the same. Audits of larger corporations -- those with assets over $10 million -- dropped by 2.2 percent, to 10,591. The exempt organization area audited 7,079 returns in 2006, an increase of 43 percent from the previous year.
