IRS Individual Income Tax Audits

IRS individual income tax audits continue to decrease, according to the IRS fiscal year 2019 Progress Update Report released this week.  Taxpayers are now half as likely to be audited by the IRS for their individual income tax returns as they were a decade ago, with the decline in the IRS workforce largely to blame. 

Last year, the IRS audited 0.45 percent of individual Form 1040 income tax returns, which is down from 1.1 percent of tax returns audited in 2010.  “The IRS lost more than 29,618 full time positions between fiscal year 2010 and fiscal year 2019, which includes Information Technology, Operations Support, Taxpayer Service and Enforcement personnel.

These losses directly correlate with a steady decline in the number of individual audits during the past nine years,” the IRS report notes.  Further, the IRS anticipates that up to 31 percent of its workforce (nearly 19,719 full-time employees) will retire within the next five years.