Study Finds Prosecution of IRS Cases Varies Nationally

Taxpayers in different regions of the country face widely varying levels of criminal prosecution in cases brought by the Internal Revenue Service, according to a new study sponsored by Syracuse University.

The study said that judicial districts headquartered in the District of Columbia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, West Virginia and Virginia are home to the highest number of criminal referrals per capita in the nation.

The weakest referrals are districts in Vermont, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Alabama and Kansas, the study found.

The judicial district centered in Los Angeles is ranked 47th out of 90 in terms of the severity of prosecution. San Diego is 45th, Sacramento 37th and San Francisco 38th.

The study, conducted by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, examined Justice Department data on criminal referrals by the IRS in 1994.

Spokesmen at both the IRS and Justice Department called the study’s data badly flawed and its conclusions suspect.

An IRS spokesman said the Justice Department tabulates criminal referrals differently than does the IRS--counting requests for summonses, internal investigations and other matters that are not criminal tax cases.

A Justice Department spokesman said: “The statistics are so flawed I don’t know what to do with them.” He said the Justice Department files criminal charges in 93% of the cases referred by the IRS, far higher than the overall 50% rate suggested by the report.

In addition, the study erred by looking at only a single year, because U.S. attorneys have wide latitude to target a specific crime for tough enforcement in their areas in any year, the spokesman said. The study provided no explanation of why the IRS has such wide variations in its criminal prosecutions. But David Burnham, the study’s author, said the data raises serious questions of whether Americans are getting equal protection, as required under the Constitution.

The study also suggested that the IRS rarely recommends that the Justice Department prosecute a taxpayer. Just 17 of every 1 million taxpayers are subject to such a recommendation, the study found. The probability of being murdered is greater, according to the study.