Fewer IRS audits are expected after the rate dropped for the sixth year in a row in 2017 for the agency, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The Internal Revenue Service, which has lost about one-third of its enforcement workers since 2010, audited one in about 160 individual tax returns in 2017, its lowest number since 2002, the newspaper stated. In 2010, the IRS audited one in 90 individual returns, according to the agency Thursday.
"Compared to the prior year, there were fewer audits and collection actions during fiscal year 2017," the
IRS said in a statement. "The IRS audited almost 934,000 individual income tax returns during the fiscal year, the lowest number of audits since 2003. The chance of being audited fell to 0.6 percent, the lowest coverage rate since 2002.
"Several collection actions fell during the fiscal year. IRS levies were down 32 percent compared to the prior year, and the agency filed about five percent fewer liens than in fiscal year 2016," the agency's statement continued.
The IRS stated that in fiscal year 2017, it collected more than $3.4 trillion, processed more than 245 million tax returns and other forms, and issued more than 121 million individual income tax refunds totaling almost $437 billion.
Andy Mattson, a certified public accountant at Moss Adams LLP in Silicon Valley, told The Wall Street Journal that he noticed the decline in audits of high earners.
"We get far more state audits of our clients than IRS audits," Mattson told the newspaper.
An IRS representative told the newspaper that the audit decrease for high earners is tied to a decline in IRS compliance personnel. The IRS representative said those returns often have more complex returns that take longer to examine and require more highly skilled staff.
The Wall Street Journal wrote that the number of taxpayers reporting incomes of more than $1 million increased nearly 25 percent between 2015 and 2017.
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.