CBS Local — There’s good news for Americans you hate filing their taxes each year; the chances you’ll be audited have fallen to the lowest level in 15 years.
According to data obtained by The Wall Street Journal, audits have fallen for the sixth straight year with only 0.62 percent of taxpayers being examined by the IRS in 2017. The numbers have dropped dramatically since 2010, where audits reached a high of one for every 90 filers that year.
Audits for Americans making over $1 million a year have also dropping off this decade. Just over four percent of millionaires had their filings audited in 2017. Just under 10 percent of the country’s millionaires were audited two years earlier and over 12 percent faced an audit in 2010.
Tax collectors are blaming the massive drop off on budget cuts at the IRS which have reportedly led to a third of enforcement agents being let go. The IRS was given $11.2 billion in the 2017 federal budget, eight percent less than the agency received at its peak in 2010.
“We get far more state audits of our clients than IRS audits,” California CPA Andy Mattson told WSJ. The Trump administration’s 2019 budget is reportedly keeping the lower IRS budget in place; proposing $11 billion in base funding next year.