The Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) Return Review Program (RRP) detects and selects potentially fraudulent returns to prevent the issuance of invalid refunds. According to IRS, RRP uses advanced analytic techniques and various data sources, including prior-year tax returns, to assign multiple scores to individual returns based on characteristics of identity theft and other refund fraud. GAO foun

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

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

In fiscal year 2016, the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) assessed its advance premium tax credit (PTC) program as susceptible to significant improper payments. CMS instituted a qualitative method for assessing the susceptibility of its program that was consistent with requirements, including assessing each of the nine required qualitat

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), the Additional Child Tax Credit (ACTC), and the American Opportunity Tax Credit (AOTC) provide tax benefits to millions of taxpayers--many of whom are low-income--who are working, raising children, or pursuing higher education. These credits are refundable in that, in addition to offsetting tax liability, any excess credit over the tax liability is refunded to

In each year from 2006 to 2012, at least two-thirds of all active corporations had no federal income tax liability. Larger corporations were more likely to owe tax. Among large corporations (generally those with at least $10 million in assets) less than half--42.3 percent--paid no federal income tax in 2012. Of those large corporations whose financial statements reported a profit, 19.5 percent pa

Three offices in the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) Wage and Investment division (W&I) are responsible for selecting returns for audit. Most returns are selected via computer systems that automatically send notices to taxpayers based on certain criteria, such as the validity of dependents. W&I program officials annually review the criteria and apply updates to the following filing season's retu

IRS's strategy for ensuring taxpayer compliance with the adoption credit included the following: (1) Communicating and reaching out to taxpayers and other stakeholders, including tax professionals and adoption organizations, about new requirements. (2) Requiring taxpayers seeking the adoption credit to submit proof of a completed or in-progress adoption with their return. Because taxpayers claimi

Foreign and U.S. tax administrators use many of the same practices such as information reporting, tax withholding, providing Web-based services, and finding new approaches for tax compliance. These practices, although common to each system, have important differences. Although differences in laws, culture, or other factors likely would affect the transferability of foreign tax practices to the Un

During our audit of IRS's fiscal year 2010 financial statements, we identified several internal control issues for which we do not already have recommendations outstanding. These issues involved the following: (1) First-Time Homebuyer Tax Credits. IRS's internal controls were not fully effective in identifying instances where taxpayers improperly made duplicate First-Time Homebuyer Credit (FTHBC)