The Internal Revenue Service has announced work is underway on the Simple Notice Initiative, an effort to simplify and clarify about 170 million letters sent annually to taxpayers. It's about time and those who have received one can certainly testify to that.
Those who make more than $400,000 aren't the only people the IRS is looking at regardless of what you hear in the media.
The IRS believes that sole proprietors' underreporting of income and overreporting of expenses cost the government about $182 billion of projected lost revenue not paid voluntarily in tax year 2021 alone. This figure doesn't even take into consideration underpaid or unpaid self-employment taxes.
Here are some of the suggestions that government auditors are looking at to lower noncompliance:
The IRS has announced plans to end a major tax loophole for wealthy taxpayers that could raise more than $50 billion in revenue over the next decade, the U.S. Treasury Department says. They plan to essentially stop “partnership basis shifting", which is a process where a business or person can move assets among a series of related parties to avoid paying taxes.
The US Supreme Court recently ruled in a case called Polselli v. IRS, that the IRS can sometimes secretly probe bank records without notice to taxpayers. Under an existing statute, the IRS can also without notice request and examine bank records of people who don't even owe it money - like friends, family, and associates of a taxpayer who does owe the IRS.
This dispute began when a taxpayer (Remo Polselli) owed more than $2 million in taxes to the IRS.