The shrinking IRS

In 2010 the IRS had almost 14,000 auditors; last year it had 9,510 auditors. The last time the IRS had fewer than 10,000 revenue agents was 1953, when the economy was a seventh of its current size. And the IRS is still shrinking. Almost a third of its remaining employees will be eligible to retire in the next year, and with morale plummeting, many of them will.

The IRS conducted 675,000 fewer audits in 2017 than it did in 2010, a drop in the audit rate of 42 percent.

In 2011 the IRS investigated 2,400,000 people who were thought to have not filed; last year the number was 362,000.

Collections from people who do file but don’t pay have plummeted. Tax obligations expire after 10 years if the IRS doesn’t pursue them. Such expirations were relatively infrequent before the budget cuts began. In 2010, $482 million in tax debts lapsed. By 2017, according to internal IRS collection reports, that figure had risen to $8.3 billion, 17 times as much as in 2010. The IRS’ ability to investigate criminals has atrophied as well.

ProPublica estimates a toll of at least $18 billion every year, but the true cost could easily run tens of billions of dollars higher.