IRS says it’s auditing more multimillionaires
Attention multimillionaires, the watchful eye of the Internal Revenue Service is trained on you.
During last year’s tax season, 30% of taxpayers making an adjusted gross annual income of $10 million or more were audited, the agency said, up from 18% in 2010. Overall, just 1.1% of individual income tax returns were checked.
Nearly 21% of Americans making between $5 million and $10 million annually had their returns inspected, the IRS said; 12% of millionaires making less underwent the same process.
From Oct. 1, 2010, through Sept. 30, 2011, the agency said it collected $2.4 trillion in taxes from 234 million processed returns, up from the $2.3 trillion collected the year before. It was the first year of increased revenue since 2008.
The IRS said more than 133 million tax returns — including more than three-quarters of individual returns — were filed online. More than 8 in 10 individual returns resulted in refunds — a total payout of $338 billion (among all tax returns, nearly $415.9 billion was refunded).
Nearly 4,700 criminal investigations were completed last year, the agency said, with 1,802 resulting in incarcerations.
Nearly 28 million returns, or $281.2 billion in gross collections, came from California, the most of any state. Nearly 13.9 million refunds, or $47 billion, went to taxpayers.
