The Inner Income Service continues to take “swift and aggressive motion” to rein in high-income tax cheats, recovering previously yr $520 million in again taxes from people with greater than $1 million in earnings and greater than $250,000 in acknowledged tax debt, IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel informed lawmakers.

“That’s half a billion {dollars} recovered from fewer than 1,000 millionaires and billionaires,” Werfel mentioned in current testimony.

On Sept. 8, the IRS mentioned that it was shifting its consideration to rich taxpayers, partnerships and different excessive earners “which have seen sharp drops in audit charges” through the previous decade.

“It will likely be pushed with the assistance of improved expertise in addition to Synthetic Intelligence that may assist IRS compliance groups higher detect tax dishonest, determine rising compliance threats and enhance case choice instruments to keep away from burdening taxpayers with unnecessary ‘no-change’ audits,” the company defined.

The new compliance initiative was funded by the $80 billion, 10-year funding enhance the IRS acquired in 2021 beneath the Inflation Discount Act. A spending deal in 2023 clawed again $20 billion of that funding.

Werfel informed lawmakers on Feb. 15 that attaining the company’s “bold transformation agenda requires us to rebuild areas within the IRS which have suffered from greater than a decade of underfunding that preceded the IRA.”

2024 Submitting Season

Offering an summary of the 2024 tax submitting season, which started on Jan. 29, Werfel mentioned that it’s “going easily up to now,” and that via Feb. 2, the IRS acquired greater than 15.3 million particular person earnings tax returns and issued greater than 2.6 million refunds for about $3.65 billion.

The company additionally has a objective this yr of offering extra in-person assist at its Taxpayer Help Facilities, he added.

“The objective is to supply over 8,500 extra hours of in-person help than we did final submitting season,” Werfel informed members of the Home Methods and Means Committee on Feb. 15.

“We’re increasing hours at practically 250 TACs across the nation through the submitting season; once more providing particular Saturday hours at sure TAC areas; and opening extra pop-up facilities to succeed in taxpayers who don’t reside close to a TAC,” he mentioned.