IRS now concealing data on tax audits
Tuesday, January 10th, 2006I read an interesting article in today’s New York Times (January 10, 2006 page A19). Entitled “I.R.S. Is Sued on Failure to Release Tax Data.”
It turns out that back in 1976, Professor Susan B. Long won a Federal court case against the IRS. The Federal court ordered the IRS to provide her with data which show how thoroughly the IRS audits big corporations and the rich, and how much it discounts taxes assessed these corporations and individuals following an audit.
For decades the IRS has provided this data at no charge to Professor Long, who posts her analyses on a website Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse along with tools which allow people to conduct their own analyses.
Among Prof. Long’s findings from earlier IRS data was that in 1999, poor people were much more likely to be audited by the agency than rich people.
But in May 2004, the IRS informed Prof. Long that it would no longer provide this information and ordered its statisticians to stop answering her questions. It also advised her that if it were ever to make the data public again that it would cost $12,000/month to receive the data in electronic form.
The senior national spokesman for the IRS, Frank Keith, has apparently claimed that no court order exists. Details on the orginal court order and the suits being brought to enforce it can be found at trac.syr.edu/foia.
Mr. Keith (the IRS Senior National Spokesman) went out of his way to state that no Bush political appointees had been involved in the decision to stop supplying Prof. Long with the data.