The IRS is spending increasingly less time auditing large
companies. This is a good thing, right? But wait, the IRS is
starting to launch audit campaigns. And some large taxpayers are
still being audited even if they are not caught up in a campaign.
What could be some of the consequences of these dynamics?
A recent report confirmed that IRS audits of large companies
have fallen steeply in recent years. The report conducted by TRAC
(Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access
Clearinghouse) (available
here) analyzed IRS audit history of large companies
from 2010 through 2015. The study found the IRS spent 34
percent less time on average auditing companies with $250 million
or more in assets (Big Corps) in 2015 than it did in 2010.
Audits of the largest companies are declining even more sharply:
the IRS spent 47 percent less time auditing companies with assets
of $20 billion or more (Giant Corps). Further, the total number of
large businesses audited by the
