Federal law provides certain tax benefits for transactions involving genuine insurance products, including insurance products held offshore. While taxpayers may lawfully hold offshore insurance products, they contain features that make them vulnerable for use in abusive tax schemes. For example, offshore insurance products can be highly technical and individualized, making enforcement challenging

The platform economy is an arrangement where workers offering goods or services connect with customers through an app or other online platform. Estimates of the population of platform workers lack certainty, but generally range from around 1.5 million to 2 million workers for recent years and suggest that the platform workforce may be growing. According to stakeholders, such as researchers and ta

The Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) Publications 590-A and 590-B serve as a general handbook for millions of taxpayers with individual retirement accounts (IRA). However, the two-part publication provides limited information for IRA owners with unconventional assets surrounding complex tax rules in four compliance areas: (1) barred investments, (2) prohibited transactions, (3) unrelated business

Taxpayers have used a variety of abusive tax schemes involving tax-exempt entities. In some schemes, the tax-exempt entity is complicit in the scheme, while in others it is not. For example, an abusive tax scheme could involve multiple donors grossly overvaluing charitable contributions, where the tax-exempt entity is not part of the scheme. Conversely, some patient assistance programs—which ca

The Department of Labor (DOL) has a process to grant administrative exemptions for individual retirement account (IRA) transactions that would otherwise be prohibited by law, such as an IRA buying investment property from the IRA owner. DOL evaluates applications using statutory criteria and follows administrative procedures codified in regulations. Applications for proposed transactions that are

The Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) latest tax gap estimate (2016) found that taxpayers voluntarily and timely paid about 81.7 percent of owed taxes for tax years 2008-2010, leaving an annual gross tax gap of $458 billion. IRS estimated a net tax gap—after late payments and enforcement actions—of $406 billion. GAO's work has found that three important factors contribute to the tax gap. (1) L

Federal law and guidance require that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the sensitive financial and taxpayer information that resides on its systems. However, taxpayer information held by third-party providers—such as paid tax return preparers and tax preparation software providers—generally falls outside of these requirements, acco

IRS continues to confront the ongoing problems of identity theft (IDT) refund fraud. The agency estimates that at least $1.68 billion was paid in IDT refund fraud in 2016. To help address this issue, consistent with GAO's prior reporting, the Protecting Americans from Tax Hikes Act of 2015 advanced the deadline for employers to file W-2s to SSA to January 31 (about 1 to 2 months earlier than in p

Federal agencies generally use one of four payroll shared service centers (SSCs) to process employee timesheets, assure withheld tax is paid, and send Form W-2 Wage and Tax Statement (W-2) data to the Social Security Administration (SSA) and state tax authorities. GAO found these SSCs generally sent this W-2 data to SSA and states in a timely manner for tax years 2015 and 2016. However, SSCs vari

The Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) latest tax gap estimate found that taxpayers voluntarily and timely paid about 81.7 percent of the taxes they should have paid for tax years 2008-2010. As with past estimates, underreporting of individual income taxes accounted for the largest portion of the 2008-2010 tax gap. IRS believes the tax gap estimates are sufficiently reliable to provide a snapshot o