New IRS Initiative Giving Rise to More Employment Tax Audits This Fall

written by trigon
08-05-2009
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The Internal Revenue Service has announced a new National Research Program ("NRP") initiative relating to employment taxes. The IRS started NRPs in 2001 to measure the "tax gap."

The "tax gap" is the difference between the amount of income that taxpayers voluntarily report and pay tax on, versus the amount of tax that the IRS perceives is actually due. An NRP assesses the effectiveness of the existing compliance programs so that taxpayers will report and pay tax on the full amount of taxpayer income (since the IRS' stated goal is to promote voluntary taxpayer compliance).

Basically, an NRP can be likened to an industry-wide audit. The IRS will use the data gathered from this "mass audit" to improve the IRS' programs promoting voluntary compliance with regard to employment taxes.

Read full article on New IRS rules