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IRS says ‘vast majority’ of 1M pandemic-era credit claims show risk of being improper
The Employee Retention Credit was designed to help businesses retain employees during pandemic-era shutdowns, but it quickly became a magnet for fraud.
The Employee Retention Credit was designed to help businesses retain employees during pandemic-era shutdowns, but it quickly became a magnet for fraud.
The guidance and ruling being announced Monday includes plans to essentially stop “partnership basis shifting”—a process by which a business or person can move assets among a series of related parties to avoid paying taxes.
The IRS is warning taxpayers that they might be leaving more than $1 billion in unclaimed refunds on the table.
The audits will focus on aircraft used by large corporations and high-income taxpayers and whether the tax purpose of the jet use is being properly allocated, the IRS says.
Nearly 5 million people, businesses and tax-exempt organizations—most making under $400,000 per year—will be eligible for the relief starting this week.
That figure, which Microsoft disputes, stems from a long-running IRS probe into how Microsoft allocated its profits among countries and jurisdictions in the years 2004 to 2013.
The IRS has received 3.6 million claims for the credit over the course of the program. It said hundreds of criminal cases have been started and thousands of claims have been referred for audit.
IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel said that with a boost in federal funding and the help of artificial intelligence tools, the agency has new means of targeting wealthy people who have “cut corners” on their taxes.
The IRS in May announced that it would launch a pilot program for the 2024 filing season to allow taxpayers to file directly to the agency for free.
The filing deadline for most taxpayers is Tuesday, though it has been extended for parts of Indiana, California, Alabama, Georgia, New York, Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi that were hard hit by severe weather.
Big tax preparation companies have millions of dollars to lose if the program comes to fruition. Last year, more than 60 million taxpayers were serviced by Intuit, the parent company of TurboTax, and H&R Block.
IRS and Treasury Department officials said Thursday that they will use part of the $80 billion in new funding for the tax service to claw back unpaid balances from high-income earners and complex businesses.
Commissioner Danny Werfel delivered a tax-season pledge Tuesday that the agency will use an $80 billion infusion of cash to become faster, more tech-savvy and provide “real-world improvements” to taxpayers.
After its controversial funding boost, the agency is answering 90 percent of its phone calls, has squashed its backlog of overdue returns, introduced new online taxpayer tools to keep pace with private software companies and processed 99.7 percent of returns filed this tax season, according to agency reports.
President Joe Biden nominated Werfel to steer the Internal Revenue Service as it receives a massive funding boost—nearly $80 billion over the next 10 years through the Inflation Reduction Act, which Congress passed in August.
The IRS announced Friday that most relief checks issued last year by states, including Indiana, aren’t subject to federal taxes, providing 11th hour guidance as tax returns start to pour in.
The news comes after the National Taxpayer Advocate reported Wednesday that the IRS watchdog is seeing “a light at the end of the tunnel” of the IRS’ customer service struggles.
House Republicans have passed a bill that would rescind nearly $71 billion that Congress had provided the IRS.
A report released by the Democratic majority on the House Ways and Means Committee indicated the Trump administration may have disregarded an IRS requirement dating back to 1977 that mandates audits of a president’s tax filings.
Money from a recent $80 billion infusion for the IRS from the so-called Inflation Reduction Act will be used to help audit high-income earners who do not pay their full tax liability.