A sign is displayed outside the Internal Revenue Service building May 4, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)
The IRS plans to go after 125,000 high-income earners who did not file tax returns going back to 2017 â and the agency says hundreds of millions of dollars of unpaid taxes are involved in these cases.
Beginning this week, the IRS will start sending out noncompliance letters to more than 25,000 people who earn more than $1 million per year and 100,000 people with incomes between $400,000 and $1 million who failed to pay their taxes between 2017 and 2021.
The campaign announced Thursday is part of the agencyâs ongoing effort to pursue high wealth tax cheats â mandated in part by funding provided through Democratsâ Inflation Reduction Act passed into law in 2022 and a directive from Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to IRS leadership not to increase audit rates on people making less than $400,000 a year annually.
âWhen people donât file a tax return theyâre required to, itâs not fair to those hardworking taxpayers who responsibly do their civic duty under the laws of our nation,â IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel told reporters Thursday morning.
An independent watchdog within the IRS reports that while taxpayer services have vastly improved, the agency is still too slow to resolve identity theft cases. And National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins says those delays are âunconscionable.â Erin M. Collins said in the report released Wednesday that overall the 2024 filing season went smoothly, though IRS delays in resolving identity theft victim assistance cases are worsening. It took nearly 19 months to resolve self-reported identity theft cases as of January, and Wednesday's report states that now it takes 22 months to resolve these cases.
Amazon.com Inc. surpassed $2 trillion in market value for the first time in afternoon trading on Wednesday. The push higher for Amazonâs stock market valuation comes a little more than a week after Nvidia hit $3 trillion and briefly became the most valuable company on Wall Street. Nvidiaâs chips are used to power many AI application and its valuation has soared as a result. Amazon has also been making big investments in AI as global interest has grown in the technology. Most of the companyâs focus has been on business-focused products.
Climate change doesnât just mean more extreme weather â it also leads to billions of dollars in lost productivity, tourism, and stresses infrastructure.