Category: Audits and Enforcement

Any taxpayer with a Social Security number or Individual Taxpayer Identification Number can stop a thief from filing a fraudulent federal return in their name, at no cost, by requesting a six-digit Identity Protection PIN from the IRS. The tool works by requiring that code on every electronically filed return tied to that taxpayer’s identification…

A company that never filed a lawsuit may still be owed millions in tariff refunds. That is the upshot of a March 5, 2026, ruling by the United States Court of International Trade, which held that “all importers of record” can claim money back after the Supreme Court struck down tariffs imposed under the International…

A wine importer that challenged Trump-era tariffs in federal court has received a six-figure refund check from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, one of the first confirmed payouts under a new electronic system built to process claims tied to duties the Supreme Court struck down. The payment arrived through CBP’s Consolidated Administration and Processing of…

Taxpayers who claim the Earned Income Tax Credit, a benefit designed for low- and moderate-income workers, face IRS audit scrutiny at rates roughly five times the average for all other filers. That disparity persists even as overall audit rates have fallen for years and even as federal policy has directed new enforcement resources toward taxpayers…

Tens of millions of Americans who paid penalties on late tax filings during the COVID-19 pandemic could be owed refunds from the IRS, following a federal court ruling that reinterprets how disaster-related deadline relief applies to coronavirus-era fines. The case, Kwong v. USA, filed in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, has forced the IRS…

Households and small businesses earning less than $400,000 a year are shielded from any uptick in IRS audit activity under a directive issued by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. The order, sent to the IRS Commissioner, explicitly bars the agency from using new enforcement funding to raise the share of examinations on filers below that income…

Wealthy Americans filing tax returns with $1 million or more in income face far less scrutiny from the IRS than they did a decade ago. The agency examined roughly 16,800 such returns in the most recent fiscal year on record, a steep fall from about 41,000 a decade earlier. That decline has unfolded even as…

Taxpayers who report between $200,000 and $1 million in positive income face roughly 4.5 audits for every 1,000 returns filed, a rate that has dropped steadily over the past decade as IRS staffing shrank. That modest examination rate sits well below the levels applied to the highest earners, yet it also falls short of what…

Roughly 330,000 importers are waiting for the federal government to return approximately $166 billion in tariffs that courts have ruled invalid, and a federal judge wants the money moving faster than Customs and Border Protection says it can manage. CBP told the court in a sworn filing that processing refunds for about 53 million import…

More than 330,000 importers are waiting on roughly $166 billion in tariff refunds, and a federal judge has now demanded that the Customs and Border Protection commissioner appear in court Tuesday to explain exactly when those payments will arrive. The order escalates a legal standoff over refunds tied to Trump-era tariffs that the U.S. Supreme…