IRS Criminal Enforcement Investigations Improve

by Mike Godfrey, Tax-News.com, Washington

30 August 2010

According to a recently-released report by the United States Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), the criminal investigation division (CI Division) of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has shown improvements in meeting most statistical trends for its enforcement activities, including work related to legal source tax crimes.

The CI Division investigates potential criminal violations of the Internal Revenue Code, and related financial crimes, to promote compliance with the tax law. Its current strategic plan calls for it to maintain a focus on legal source tax investigations, to combat corporate fraud and terrorism, and to reduce the number of days to complete an investigation, among other priorities.

Legal source tax investigations involve taxpayers in legal industries and occupations who earn their income legally but choose to evade taxes by violating the law.

TIGTA's report found that the CI Division demonstrated its commitment to pursuing legal-source tax and tax-related investigations as its top investigative priority. The CI Division had achieved its goals in 2009, spending 52.4% of its time on legal source tax work and 72% on total tax investigations, a 10-year high for both areas.

TIGTA made no recommendations in the report. IRS officials were provided an opportunity to review the draft report, and made no comments.

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