Just three years ago, Congress was on the warpath about the IRS being too tough on taxpayers. The IRS got the message, shifted agents from enforcement to service, put more effort into answering telephones and helping taxpayers understand the confusing tax code. This year, when a Syracuse University study team, Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, analyzed the IRS data, it found tax enforcement had suffered.
Audits are profoundly down.
But last year, it audited only one of every 204. In 1992, the IRS took 2,519 taxpayers to court, but last year it filed just 641 cases. In 1992, the IRS audited just over half of the largest corporations, but last year it audited just under a third. On top of that, the IRS commissioner, Charles Rossotti, says the new budget gives his agency a little more money but still not enough to pursue tax cheats and protesters as vigorously as they did in years past. We can't continue the kind of decline we've had over the last 10 years.