The Internal Revenue Service is sending out more than 125,000 compliance letters to Americans it says have not paid taxes.
The effort is part of how the IRS is spending money it was given under the Inflation Reduction Act, according to an IRS news release.
The CP59 notices of a failure to file will cover tax years from 2017 through 2021.
The IRS said it will send 25,000 letters to Americans with more than $1 million in income who did not file a return.
More than 100,000 letters will go to individuals with incomes of between $400,000 and $1 million who did not file.
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The IRS noted that because some people will get more than one letter, the number of letters will exceed the number of individuals told to pay up.
The IRS tracked these Americans by combing through third-party information such as W-2 forms and 1099 forms to see who was paid income but did not file a tax return.
The release said the IRS is not certain how much in tax revenue it will gain, because it does not know what credits and deductions those on the list will have, but said the overall financial activity recorded in the letter tops $100 billion.
“Even with a conservative estimate, the IRS believes hundreds of millions of dollars of unpaid taxes are involved in these cases. At the same time, some non-filers may actually be owed a refund,” the release said.
Does the IRS wield too much power?
The IRS said it continues to press millionaires who have not paid their tax debt, saying that to date it has collected nearly $500 million through targeting 1,600 millionaires with work continuing in this area.
Artificial intelligence is being used by the IRS as it probes 75 of the nation’s largest partnerships, the release said.
“At this time of year when millions of hard-working people are doing the right thing paying their taxes, we cannot tolerate those with higher incomes failing to do a basic civic duty of filing a tax return,” Danny Werfel, the IRS commissioner, said, according to USA Today.
“The IRS is taking this step to address this most basic form of non-compliance, which includes many who are engaged in tax evasion,” he said.
“It’s ridiculous that thousands of wealthy people don’t even bother to file a tax return,” David Kass, executive director of the nonprofit Americans for Tax Fairness, said. “This IRS enforcement makes the point that the rich can’t play by their own set of rules.”
Within the past year, the IRS has hired about 5,700 people, Reuters reported, citing a Treasury Department official it did not name.
