CLAIM: The Internal Revenue Service audits the poor at five times the rate of the rich. Some 87,000 new IRS agents are going to focus on $600 Venmo transactions, not billionaires.
AP’S ASSESSMENT: Partly false. A Syracuse University analysis did find that the IRS audits certain low-income wage earners more than five times more than other groups, in part because budget cuts have caused the agency to rely more on automated “correspondence audits.” But the agency’s new infusion of funding will not fund 87,000 employees at once, nor will it fund only auditors. A new tax policy requires mobile payment apps and users to report information about commercial transactions above $600 to the IRS, but it won’t add an additional tax or apply to personal transactions.
THE FACTS: In one of their first legislative actions on Monday, House Republicans voted to slash nearly $71 billion in funding that Congress had provided the IRS.
Though the move doesn’t have the votes to pass the Democrat-led Senate, it resurrected months-old false claims about what the money will do for the agency and who the IRS will target for tax enforcement.
“The IRS audits the poor 5 times the rate of the rich,” one popular tweet read. “87,000 new IRS agents aren’t for billionaires. They are for $600 Venmo transactions.”
While it’s true that the IRS audits low-income people who take the earned income tax credit at more than five times the rate of other taxpayers, according to a Syracuse University analysis, it’s...
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