I’m referring to the bombshell working paper that made headlines earlier this week, in which a team of academic and Treasury Department economists found that the IRS audits Black taxpayers at roughly three to five times the rate of non-Black taxpayers. Even among those claimants, the study found, Black taxpayers, who accounted for an estimated 21 percent of EITC filers, were selected for 43 percent of the audits. GOP leaders are still spreading the false claim about the 87,000 new IRS agents, but nary a peep so far on this racial discrimination bombshell. Republicans have spent decades cutting necessary resources from the IRS, forcing the agency to rely on automated systems that unfairly target Black Americans for audits. Perhaps Kevin McCarthy and the others figure the GOP base won’t care that Black people are over-audited.

Source: New York Times February 03, 2023 17:26 UTC