IRS records show that, as of September 30, 2007, over 1.6 million businesses owed over $58 billion in unpaid federal payroll taxes, including interest and penalties. Some of these businesses took advantage of the existing tax enforcement and administration system to avoid fulfilling or paying federal tax obligations--thus abusing the federal tax system. Over a quarter of payroll taxes are owed by

IRS has made significant progress in improving its internal controls and financial management since its first financial statement audit in 1992, as evidenced by 8 consecutive years of clean audit opinions on its financial statements, the resolution of several material internal control weaknesses, and actions resulting in the closure of over 200 financial management recommendations. This progress

Our analysis of data provided by CMS and IRS indicates that over 27,000 health care providers (i.e., about 6 percent of all such providers) paid under Medicare during calendar year 2006 had payroll and other agreed-to federal tax debts totaling over $2 billion. The $2 billion in unpaid tax debts only includes those debts reported on a tax return or assessed by IRS through its enforcement programs

Demand for telephone assistance related to the economic stimulus legislation has been unprecedented, according to IRS. For the week ending May 24, volume was almost six times greater than the same week last year. Despite reallocating staff from collections work to answering stimulus-related calls, the percent of callers waiting to speak with an assistor who got through has declined markedly to 39

RALs are marketed by tax preparers that operate in a wide variety of businesses, ranging from major retail stores to automobile dealers and shoe stores. Of the 40 tax preparers we called or visited, 37 offered RALs. 13 tax preparers offered year-round tax preparation in their own stand-alone offices, while 27 were open only during the tax season and operated at tables or desks within existing bus

During our audit of IRS's fiscal year 2007 financial statements, we identified several internal control matters not addressed by previous recommendations. These matters concern the following: summary information reported in the Interim Revenue Accounting Control System (IRACS), IRS's general ledger system for tax-related transactions, could not be traced to the underlying detailed transaction rec

Like other tax systems, even a simple VAT--one that exempts few goods or services--has compliance risks and, largely as a consequence, generates administrative costs and compliance burden. For example, all of the study countries reported that they devoted significant enforcement resources to addressing compliance. Businesses whose taxable purchases exceed their taxable sales are entitled to a ref

The President's fiscal year 2009 budget request for IRS is $11.4 billion, 4.3 percent more than last year's enacted amount. The request proposes to maintain taxpayer service at recent levels, in part by realizing efficiency gains from electronic filing, despite a decrease in staffing. It also proposes a 7 percent increase in enforcement spending, including spending for 21 legislative and nonlegis

The President's fiscal year 2009 budget request of $11.4 billion for IRS is 4.3 percent more than its 2008 enacted budget and includes increases of 7 percent for enforcement and less than 1 percent for taxpayer service. IRS is proposing a number of new enforcement initiatives, and deserves to be commended for providing ROI analyses to support them. Although the budget request for IRS provides per

In nine case studies, filers of information returns told GAO that existing information return costs were relatively low. One small business employing under five people told GAO of possibly spending 3 to 5 hours per year filing Form 1099 information returns manually, using an accounting package to gather the information. Two parties selling services reported prices for preparing and filing Forms 1