4 ms·
This seems to have a statistical backing to me: I'd assume lower income folks take less time to audit than wealthy folks. I'd also assume there are more low in
by washbrain 4y ago
This seems to have a statistical backing to me:
I'd assume lower income folks take less time to audit than wealthy folks. I'd also assume there are more low income than high income people. My final assumption is that the IRS will start a new audit when they complete one, rather than just wait.
Imagine then two auditors, both selecting random tax returns. One pulls a wealthy return, the other pulls a low income return.
The person auditing the wealthy return spends two months working on theirs. The low income return is audited in a week. The auditor then pulls a second return, also low income. This one takes a week, so they pull another, also low income.
You can see the pattern here - it's not malicious (though it may be a systemic injustice), it's an outcome of statistics playing out in unintended ways.
- alistairSH 4y agoYou can see the pattern here - it's not malicious (though it may be a systemic injustice), it's an outcome of statistics playing out in unintended ways. Probably true. But purely from a revenue perspective, I wonder if larger emphasis on the rich would pay better dividends? Over half the audits are for returns with incomes less than $25,000. Even if there's a problem, the amount of recoverable money is really low. Even though most of those are "correspondence audits" (done via letter instead of face-to-face) somebody still hast to review any new documentation.
- washbrain 4y agoOh, I totally agree with you. Random sampling is the wrong approach. There should be weighted random sampling by income.