Is the IRS and Treasury taking the wrong approach into obtaining more revenue for the Federal Government?
SL: Our role was not to judge them but to lay out what they do and look for some kind of rationale. We could not find any rationale apart from some kind of a perverse quota system. It certainly does not appear to be at all consistent with focusing where tax dollars are underreported based on their own statistics. GC: Do you have suggestions or opinions about what the IRS can do better? Is there a way that the Service can improve the quota system or do they need to reassess their strategy altogether? SL: The role of TRAC is not the typical policy research organization. Our role, as we see it, is to present a picture of what the government, in this case what the IRS, is doing with respect to tax audits and to leave it up to the reader to decide what makes sense. What we did find is that IRS sets performance goals, as all agencies do, and it sets group targets, not individual targets for agents. But nonetheless they are based on how many total audits of corporations take place for the lar
